


Ryan Berry

by thistidalwave



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel Berry may not have much going for her right now, but she's got her gold stars and she's got her ambition. The presence of her sanity is somewhat questionable, however, especially when her best idea yet involves dressing in drag and living with Kurt Hummel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ryan Berry

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to 2x10, 'A Very Glee Christmas.' Written for [this](http://community.livejournal.com/glee_fluff_meme/2832.html?thread=3691024#t3691024) glee_fluff_meme prompt. There is plot, I think, but it's mostly drowning in the fluff and dramatics.

Rachel Berry peels the last sticker on the sheet off and sticks it next to the signature on the registration papers. The gold star glints up at her, and she smiles to herself. This has got to be one of her best ideas yet.

She goes carefully through the seemingly never ending stack of papers she got off the school website to make sure that everything is filled out properly. It is, excepting the places where it demands the signature of a parent or guardian. That’s not a problem. Rachel has got this in the bag.

\---

“Hey, sweetie, we were just about to hit play on this episode of Law and Order,” Leroy says upon noticing Rachel standing at the foot of the stairs. “You going to join us?”

“I think it’s the one with the adopted special needs kids,” Hiram adds as he sits down on the couch next to his husband, handing over a bowl of popcorn.

“Actually, I’d like to have a family discussion,” Rachel says assertively, moving to sit on the coffee table in front of the couch. She ignores the warning look Hiram gives her.

“Are you having problems at school again?” Leroy asks, straightening up and placing the popcorn bowl on the side table. “Do I need to sue someone for hurting my little girl?”

“No! No... well, yes, but that’s not the point. Actually, it is. I want to transfer to Dalton Academy.” She thrusts out the hand with the papers at her fathers. They take them and look at them for a moment before looking back at Rachel.

“Rachel, honey, this is an all boys school.”

“And it’s expensive.”

Rachel waves her hand dismissively. “They have a glee club at Dalton. They’re called the Warblers, and they do a cappella Top 40 songs. I think it would be beneficial for me to experience a different side of things than I’m used to being with New Directions.”

“Ryan Berry?” Leroy reads off the registration papers.

Rachel’s face turns a bit pink. “I thought it would work.”

“You’re our little girl,” Hiram says. “An absolutely fabulous little diva, on her way to becoming a big name star with every award adorning her shelves. Why do you need to discredit that by pretending to be a boy?”

Rachel pouts a bit. “Kurt Hummel—you remember him?”

“That nice gay kid in your glee club, yeah,” Hiram agrees.

“He goes to Dalton now,” Rachel presses. “He’s in the Warblers, and they performed quite wonderfully at Sectionals, if you’ll remember. We tied.”

“Yes, but—“

“I should be able to support him on his endeavours. I’m sure he’s missing the support base he had at McKinley, and I could take it to him. Once a member of New Directions, always a member,” she declares.

“I can see why you want to do this, Rachel, but do you really think—“

“Yes! The academics at Dalton are superior as well! And... well, they have a zero harassment policy. I mean...” she trails off, letting her voice break a bit as she summons tears. “Kurt got to escape his tormentors. I just want... I don’t think it’s fair! I still spend hours plotting routes to my classes that will allow me to avoid being slushie facialed and not become predictable. I just want to walk down a hallway knowing that I’m free, you know?” There are tears running down her cheeks now, all the more easily summoned by the half truths in her speech. It isn’t the real reason she wants to go to Dalton—she’s spent years in the bully infested halls and it really isn’t too bad the majority of the time. She knows that she really has no right to compare her situation to Kurt’s, but that’s not stopping her from playing the card she knows her dads will go for.

The truth is, Rachel is sick of seeing her heartbreak in the hallways. Of having to sing with it. She doesn’t want to be around people who don’t accept her for her true brilliance anymore. She wants to shine, and if she has to dress in drag to do it, then she will.

Just as she predicted, her fathers crack. They pat her reassuringly on the shoulders while looking around for a pen, which she hands over tearfully. They take turns signing off on various things and give her back the papers, wrapping her up in the bear hugs she loves so much.

Rachel pretends she doesn’t feel a twinge of guilt somewhere deep inside her.

\---

Rachel pushes down the corner of her _Wicked_ poster so that the blue sticky tack underneath lies relatively flat and steps back to survey her work. The room’s not quite as pink as she would like, but she figures that Ryan wouldn’t be as big a fan of pink as she is.

Actually, he probably would be. She’s decided that her boy counterpart is gay. It’s just easier that way, because if she sees a hot guy and stares at him, she doesn’t want to be called out on a ruse of liking girls. And this way she can rant about hot celebrities if she wants.

Plus, there’s the whole super high voice thing, and of course that’s not limited to gay boys, but it makes it a lot more believable, in Rachel’s opinion.

She turns to look at herself in the full length mirror and grimaces. Short hair isn’t really a good look for her, but the long hair is way too much of a giveaway, so she’s cut it and mussed it in a way that she hopes looks guy-ish but still fashionable. It took a lot of effort to tape her boobs down, and she isn’t looking forward to doing that daily, but it’s a necessary sacrifice. She tugs down the bottom of her navy blue, red trimmed blazer and turns to venture out of the dorm room.

First order of business: she needs to find Kurt. He’ll help her blend.

\---

It doesn’t take her long—it’s near noon time and the cafeteria is full of students, but she can spot Kurt’s impeccable hair from miles away. She makes a beeline toward the table where he’s sitting with a bunch of boys she thinks she recognizes as Warblers from Sectionals. She definitely recognizes their lead singer sitting next to Kurt.

She reaches their table and taps Kurt on the shoulder. He turns in his seat and she watches as his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. She sees his mouth start to form words. “R—“

“Ryan Berry,” she interrupts quickly. “I thought I recognized you over here, Kurt!”

Kurt just stares.

“Mind if I sit here?” she asks, not waiting for an answer as she nudges the person on Kurt’s right away to give her space on the bench.

Kurt continues to stare. It’s only when she’s fully settled on the bench and looking at Kurt expectantly that he snaps back to reality. “What are you doing here?” he hisses.

Rachel shakes her head almost imperceptibly and chirps out, “I missed you, man.”

“Who’s this?” the lead singer asks Kurt, raising his eyebrows.

“Um,” Kurt says. “Blaine, this is Ryan Berry. Ryan, this is Blaine Anderson.”

Rachel sticks out a hand toward Blaine. “You’re the lead singer of the Warblers, right? I thought you did wonderfully with Hey, Soul Sister at Sectionals.”

Blaine half-smiles and shakes Rachel’s hand briefly. “Thank you. It’s really a team effort. You were there?”

“Oh yes,” Rachel says. “My sister is part of New Directions.” She’s a bit skeptical about the whole team effort thing. The Blaine fellow had walked halfway across the stage by himself while the rest of them hung back.

Kurt raises his eyebrows at Rachel. “Why are you here?”

“Why do you think?” Rachel challenges. “The bullies weren’t any nicer to me after you left, you know.”

Kurt furrows his eyebrows. He sees how she’s playing it, but he’s not going to let this go down without a fight. If Rachel thinks she can fake her way into the Warblers to get their set list, she has another think coming. Kurt doesn’t condone cheating.

“Oh, so you’re gay, too?” Blaine asks, interrupting the jab Kurt had been about to throw out.

Rachel nods, painting an expression of half-pain, half-hatred onto her face. At least, that’s what she thinks it looks like. Kurt thinks it looks like she’s constipated and has to bite his thumb to keep himself from laughing.

“I thought you were the only out person at your school?” Blaine asks, directing the question toward Kurt.

Kurt shrugs and directs a glare toward Rachel. “I thought I was.”

“I wasn’t out,” Rachel decides to chime in. “They just suspected me. It finally got to the point where my fathers decided that it was hardly the right environment for me to spend seven hours a day in, so here I am.”

The various Dalton students gathered around the table have all stopped eating their food, entirely engrossed by the sudden new boy with the squeaky voice.

Kurt is barely keeping himself from demanding Rachel tell him what the hell she thinks she’s doing in front of everyone. He’s sensible enough to know that if he gives her away, she’ll have his balls, and despite what some ignorant people may think, he likes being a boy.

The only solution is to relocate the problem. He grabs Rachel’s wrist and asks the table at large, “Could you excuse us for a minute?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just gets up and hauls ass away from the table, dragging Rachel behind him.

Rachel figures that she can’t really protest about Kurt dragging her away. It’s likely that she would do the same in his position. She’s surprised, however, when Kurt leads her to her dorm room and drags her inside, closing the door behind them.

“How did you know where my dorm room is?” Rachel asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Your _what_? You mean this isn’t just something clever to get you into Warblers rehearsal later? You’ve actually _enrolled_?”

“I’m not here to spy on the Warblers. I don’t need to. I’ve left New Directions and their petty drama behind. This is the start of a new life.” She attempts to toss her hair over her shoulder before realizing that she doesn’t have enough hair for that anymore. She settles on crossing her arms. “And you haven’t explained why we’re in my dorm room.”

Kurt sighs. “Because, Rachel, this is _my_ dorm room.”

Rachel’s expression morphs into surprise. “ _Oh_. Well, that’s ridiculously convenient.”

Kurt shakes his head. “No. Oh, no. I am not covering for you. You need to get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t call me Rachel, by the way,” she says, ignoring his words as she sits down on the edge of her bed. “It’s Ryan.”

Kurt stares at Rachel. It seems like he’s doing that too often today, but honestly, her _hair_. He can’t help it. What the hell does she think she’s doing? “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t report you to the administration right now.”

“Because you’ve had your heart broken by Finn, too,” she replies immediately.

“Are you still hung up on that Santana thing? Because that would be irrational—though, I must admit that you are rather prone to irrationality and this shouldn’t be a surprise. Transferring to Dalton doesn’t seem like your usual style, though. Usually you sing an angry song or—“

“All right, you can stop that now. I forgave Finn for sleeping with Santana.”

Kurt looks confused. “Then why—“

“I cheated on him. With Puck.” Rachel stares at the floor. She’s not proud of her actions—she hadn’t meant to hurt Finn.

Except she had. She’d wanted him to have his heart broken like hers had felt.

She should have remembered that she was the one who was supposed to be putting his heart back together.

“Wow.” Kurt is shocked. “I never thought you were stupid.”

“I always knew I was,” Rachel mutters.

Kurt sighs and sits down on the bed next to Rachel. “You still haven’t given me a good enough reason to want to keep you here.”

“Do you like Blaine?” she asks. It’s obvious from the way Kurt immediately flushes red that he does. “I’ll help you get him to date you!”

“I don’t need your help,” Kurt mutters. “You’ve already fucked up your own relationship.”

“Fine, I’ll leave your love life alone. You have to admit that I could help you land a solo, though. I’ll even put you before myself.” Rachel’s voice is bordering on a whine now. She’s looking up at Kurt in earnest and she reaches out and grabs his hands. “Please, Kurt. Please.”

Kurt wrenches his hands away and stands up. “Don’t ever talk in that tone of voice around anyone you want to think you’re a boy. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch my stuff. Don’t manipulate people, or at least keep it to the bare minimum, since I know how hard it’s going to be for you. Don’t ever assume I’m letting you do this because I want you to get me a solo. I’d like to see you try. I don’t know why I am letting you do this, anyway, but it’s probably because I just can’t be bothered to do anything about it. I’m sure someone’s going to figure it out in due time, anyway. It’s going to be hard to sell you like that. And can we—“

Rachel cuts him off by throwing herself at him and clutching at his waist. “Oh, Kurt, thank you. Thank you! I—“

Kurt peels her hands from behind him and holds her shoulders away from him. “I said don’t touch me,” he says, but there isn’t too much bite behind his voice. “Let me fix your hair. It looks like you’re using road kill for a hat.”

Rachel grins and obediently sits down in front of her vanity.

\---

“I’m going to Warblers practice,” Kurt says at ten to three.

Rachel jumps up from where she’d been arranging her DVDs in alphabetical order on the small bookshelf she’s set up at the end of her bed. “Can I come with you?”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “I kind of figured you would be. I can’t promise they’ll let you join, though.”

“Please, with my range? Imagine what they can do with two people who have soprano capabilities,” Rachel scoffs.

Kurt just shrugs and opens the door, exiting the room. “Come on, _Ryan_ ,” he calls over his shoulder.

Rachel rushes after him. “How did it go with Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina?” she asks when she’s caught up with him. It’s admittedly kind of difficult when he’s walking so fast and has the advantage of long legs. “I don’t think you ever told me.”

“I tried too hard,” Kurt says shortly.

Rachel frowns. “How can you try too hard? Trying is ambition and determination, and those are the qualities that get you places.”

Kurt shrugs. “Here at Dalton, we’re a team.”

“You sound like Blaine,” Rachel huffs.

“Your pitch was good when you said that. Grumble a lot and I think we’ll have Ryan Berry sold,” Kurt says nonchalantly. He’s trying not to linger on her actual words. He’s been making some real headway on his crash course of how to survive as a Dalton Academy Warbler and Rachel needling him is only setting him back. “Here we are,” he adds, stopping in front of a pair of double doors. “Let me go in and ask the council if it’s okay if you come in to watch or maybe audition. I know you’re perfectly capable of winging it.” He doesn’t wait for an answer before slipping in through the doors.

Rachel fidgets on the spot, wondering if she’s just supposed to stand there until Kurt comes back out. She decides that it’s probably her best course of action—she doesn’t want to wander off and get lost. The hallways in the Dalton buildings all look the same to her. She wonders what exactly the council is and then wonders why she didn’t grill Kurt for details before they came here. Probably because she wasn’t expecting there to be glee practice on a Saturday. She likes it, though. She’s always thought it would be beneficial to practice on weekends, but no one from McKinley would go for it.

Just one more reason why this is her best idea yet.

Kurt comes back out. Rachel looks at him expectantly. He sighs. “They said you can come in if you audition right now.” He pauses, then adds, “I recommend Top 40, if you’ve got that on hand.”

Rachel smirks. “I think I’ve got something.”

Kurt just nods and pushes the door open farther, letting Rachel enter the room ahead of him. It’s already full of uniformed boys lounging on couches and chairs, a few standing around the edges of the room. What little chatter there was going on dies out when they spot Rachel.

Wes bangs his gavel. “I call this meeting of the Warblers into session. The first order of business is the new boy, Ryan Berry. He’s going to audition for us.”

Rachel spots an iPod dock and heads over to it, taking the iPod that’s already in it out and setting it to side, plugging her own in. “This is kind of short notice, but I have a decent repertoire,” she says as she scrolls through her instrumental alternate arrangements playlist. “And the song I’m going to sing isn’t really conventional—if you’ll excuse the gender.” She locates the song and hits play, standing up straight and facing the majority of the gathered Warblers. “This is Rihanna’s The Only Girl.”

Kurt sinks down into the couch and puts a hand over his face. He doesn’t want to know if people are looking at him because they think the new boy is insane. It’s not a bad arrangement of the song, and Rachel pulls it off, but honestly. He should have just let her do Broadway.

When Rachel’s last note dies out, the Warblers erupt into polite applause. They’re all smiling and nudging each other. Rachel beams—she knows she killed it. It might not have been where she was most comfortable, but she’s Rachel Berry. Rachel Berry throws herself into things at every opportunity. As does Ryan Berry.

David is looking incredulously from Kurt to Rachel and back again. “How is it possible that two guys from the same town both have voices like that?”

“While I would be the first to deny that Kurt and I have anything near the same—“

“There’s something in the water,” Kurt interrupts. “Sort of a Lima phenomenon. Only works for those who are homosexual and have been drinking said water since birth.”

Rachel bites the inside of her lip to keep herself from laughing and nods solemnly. The Warblers all seem to be taking Kurt seriously as well. David looks down at his papers, then over at Wes. Wes nods subtly at David.

“The council is in agreement that we have a place for Ryan if he wants it. Does anyone object?”

Rachel holds her breath, but no one says anything. They all look excited, if anything.

“Great!” David continues. “Welcome to the Warblers, Ryan.”

Wes bangs his gavel, presumably to close the decision, but really more because he likes to.

\---

“That went well!” Rachel says happily as she and Kurt make their way back to their dorm room.

“Sure it did.”

“Hey, Kurt! Ryan! Wait up!” They pause to wait for Blaine to catch up with them. “What are you two doing now?”

“We were going back to our room,” Rachel answers.

“Oh, you share? Makes sense, since you’re both mid-semester transfers. Onwards, then.” They start walking all together. “I thought your audition was great,” Blaine tells Rachel. “Very... out there.”

Rachel beams. “Oh, thank you!” She catches Kurt’s subtle shake of the head and tries to lower her voice an octave. “It was just the first song I thought of when Kurt said Top 40.”

“Well, it was a fairly good performance,” Blaine says graciously, smiling at Rachel.

Rachel suddenly wants to strangle him. Rachel Berry isn’t just ‘fairly good’. Kurt recognizes the look on her face and quickly runs interference, lest he find himself having to pull her off Blaine.

“Um, Ryan and I are going to go finish unpacking all of his things, okay?” He grabs Rachel’s arm and digs his nails in, speeding up his pace and dragging her along.

“Do you need any help?” Blaine asks, hurrying to keep up.

“No, we’ll see you later, okay? You have to study for that calc test, remember?”

A panicked look crosses Blaine’s face. “Right,” he mutters, spinning on his heel. “S’later.”

Rachel watches him run off in the opposite direction over her shoulder as Kurt pulls her forward, amused. “It’s Saturday and he’s rushing off to study? Not that I don’t promote commitment to academia, but... well, I suppose it’s refreshing.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “He hates calculus is all. Apparently hatred equals twice the study time.”

“I can’t believe he only thought I was fairly good,” Rachel says as they enter their dorm room and Kurt lets her go, flexing his fingers to get the blood flowing again.

“Rachel, you were wonderful and you know it, even if I wanted to die when you started singing that song. Blaine’s just... well, let’s just say that there’s kind of two sides to him.”

“Two sides?” Rachel echoes, tilting her head at Kurt. “What does that mean?”

Kurt sighs and sits down on his bed, inspecting his nails. His nail beds need some serious help. He wonders if Rachel will let him give her a manicure, then gleefully realizes that she’ll have to with what he’s doing for her.

“Kurt?” Rachel prompts. She is still standing in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips and one eyebrow raised.

“No, you can’t stand like that in public,” Kurt says offhandedly, now considering the state of his hair by running a careful hand over it.

“Kurt!” Rachel whines, throwing herself onto his bed on her knees. “Tell me what you meant about Blaine having two sides.”

“Get off my bed. Go finish alphabetizing your DVDs or something.”

“No way. You can’t just say something like that and then keep the explanation to yourself!”

Kurt glares at her. “I didn’t sign up for emotional talks. Get off my bed.”

Rachel huffs and obeys, tugging down the bottom of her blazer. “I wasn’t aware that it was such a sore point for you.”

“I’m sorry my attitude didn’t present that fact well enough. Now you know.”

They’re both quiet for awhile: Kurt filing a particularly stubborn nail into submission and then having to make the rest match, Rachel finishing with the DVDs and moving on to organizing iTunes playlists on her laptop.

“You’ll figure it out soon enough if you keep hanging around me,” Kurt says suddenly. He isn’t sure why he’s even contributing to that particular conversation anymore, but he hasn’t been able to shake the topic from his brain.

Then again, said topic involves Blaine and Blaine is never really far from Kurt’s thoughts.

“Oh, I’ll be sticking around,” Rachel replies without looking up from her computer screen.

Kurt isn’t sure how to feel about that.

\---

It feels like Rachel has only just drifted off to the soft sounds of her relaxation music (which, thankfully, Kurt doesn’t seem to mind as much as he minds that someone might come in at some point in the night and think he’s harbouring a girl in his room—which he is, but apparently that isn’t the point. Rachel had to let him test the door at least six times to make sure it was locked) when she is woken up by the sounds of whimpering.

Her first thought is that someone has broken in and somehow blinded her before torturing Kurt. Then she realizes that she’s still wearing her eye mask and quickly takes it off, sitting up and glancing around the room frantically. She doesn’t see anything but Kurt’s silhouette in the bed across the room.

She hears another whimper, this one louder and bordering on an actual scream, and realizes that Kurt must be having a nightmare. She’ll have to wake him up before he wakes up the entire dorm.

Rachel swings her legs out of bed and stands up, making her way carefully across the room. “Kurt?” she whispers. Kurt merely whimpers again. “Kurt,” she says louder.

“No,” Kurt breathes, flailing his arms as he rolls over in bed. “No!”

“Kurt!” Rachel says, grabbing at Kurt’s shoulders. “Kurt, wake up. It’s just a dream.”

“Karof—no!” Kurt cries, ripping himself away from Rachel’s hands.

“Kurt, wake up,” Rachel begs, cautious of touching him again. “Karofsky’s not here. Wake up!”

“Mmph—“ Kurt shoots up in bed, one hand on his forehead, breathing heavily. “Blaine?” he asks, lowering the hand.

“No, it’s Rachel. Do you get many late night calls from Blaine?”

As if on cue, the door rattles a bit and a soft voice calls out “Kurt?”

Rachel’s eyes widen.

“Shit. Rachel, just stay in here. I’ll get rid of him,” Kurt hisses, vacating his bed and striding over to the door. Rachel watches him incredulously.

“Blaine,” Kurt whispers as he unlocks the door and opens it, slipping out into the hallway and leaving it a bit ajar behind him. “I thought I told you to just go to bed tonight.”

“I tried, but I was too worried about you. I heard you call out from across the hall. You don’t usually lock your door.”

“Ryan wanted to,” Kurt says.

Rachel, who has crept over to the door and is now listening to the conversation, suddenly realizes why Kurt had been so worried about someone coming by. Because someone usually _did_.

“Are you okay?” Blaine asks.

“I’m fine. Just the same old nightmare, nothing special.”

So this is a regular occurrence. Rachel could have used that warning, in her opinion.

“It shouldn’t _be_ nothing special,” Blaine curses under his breath. “I can’t believe that asshole did this to you. He had—he had _no right_.”

“Shh, Blaine. I know. Karofsky is just—“

Kurt’s words are muffled and then cut off. “I’m so happy you’re here where you can be safe,” Blaine murmurs.

“I know,” Kurt gasps out. “Can you let me go?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Now go to bed. We can hang out tomorrow—or later today, whatever.”

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“Go sleep, Blaine,” Kurt says firmly.

“Fine, fine. Good night, Kurt.”

“Night.”

Rachel scrambles back to the edge of her bed as Kurt comes back in, trying to pretend she’d only crossed the room, but Kurt sees right through that act.

“Don’t, Rachel,” he says, holding up a hand. “I’ll explain some other time. Just go back to bed.”

Rachel sighs and doesn’t press the issue because Kurt honestly looks too tired to be worth bothering right and now and even though she has the feeling that Kurt doesn’t plan on explaining anything to her.

\---

“This school makes me feel like an idiot!” Rachel declares, dropping a stack of books onto her desk with a thud. “I know I had it easy at McKinley, but seriously! How did you transfer _before_ finals?”

“Have you ever noticed that when Blaine is concentrating really hard on something, he’ll bite his lip and almost run a hand through his hair before realizing that it’s full of gel and it’s really cute?”

“You’ll be angry with me if I say yes, won’t you?”

Kurt sits up to glare over at Rachel, making her cringe before rolling his eyes. “Not really. As you once said to me... even if we were both on the bottom of his list, I’d still be ahead of you because I’m a guy.” He leans back against his headboard, crossing his arms behind his head. “Revenge is sweet.”

Rachel sighs and sits down on her desk chair. “It’s not really revenge if I don’t like him, but you can take it,” she says. “Back to the matter at hand... what the hell are you doing lying on your bed? Do sophomores not have a monstrous pile of homework like juniors do?”

Kurt waves a hand at his desk, which has a plethora of textbooks and loose leaf paper spread across it. “I’m taking a break.”

“But—“

“If I don’t take breaks, I go insane and start writing rambling run-ons for answers. This is my last break for the afternoon, though, or I’ll mess up my entire weekend schedule when I go meet Blaine in the commons at seven.” He glances over at Rachel, who has an excited look on her face. “Don’t look at me like that. We’re just friends.”

Rachel sighs and picks up a pen, tapping it against the edge of the desk. “You two are so pathetic.”

“You’re hiding from your ex-boyfriend by dressing in drag so you can go to a different school. You have no room to talk.” Kurt gets up from his bed and stretches, shrugging off his blazer before sitting down at his desk and scribbling a sentence in Spanish onto a sheet of paper. Rachel flips open a textbook and starts making notes, pretending that she isn’t stung by the truth of the statement.

Kurt is almost finished with his Spanish essay when he hears his phone chime from its pocket inside his messenger bag. He digs it out quickly, expecting a text from Blaine. Rachel watches his face fall from across the room.

“Did Blaine cancel?” she guesses.

Kurt nods, tapping out a response on his phone. He sighs as he throws the phone onto a stack of books. “It just sucks,” he mutters, “because we haven’t properly hung out since before I left McKinley. At Dalton he just keeps running away after three minutes of actual communication, and I know there was winter break and then finals, but he still finds the time to show up in the middle of the night.”

“There aren’t many other commitments at two in the morning. And you see him at Warblers rehearsal,” Rachel points out.

Kurt gives Rachel his best what-the-fuck-are-you-going-on-about face. “That’s not Blaine.”

Rachel just shrugs. Past the midnight visits—which she no longer wakes up for since she invested in headphones for her music on Wednesday—she hasn’t seen anything to suggest that Blaine is anything but the rational, responsible, well-meaning, and utterly boring teenage boy that he comes across as.

“What were you going to do?” Rachel asks.

“He wanted to go to some restaurant downtown, but he’s got a huge American History paper due today that he didn’t finish last night because of Warblers. He was really lucky to get an extension, because apparently it’s going to take him until late tonight.”

Rachel feels uneasy about that excuse, but decides not to mention it. “We could go out if you wanted the escape the dorm for a bit.”

Kurt looks at her incredulously. “Your clothing isn’t _that_ convincing.”

“Hey, I haven’t gotten a single question all week—“

“Males are thick.”

“—and besides, you were just going as friends with Blaine. How is this different?”

“Are we friends?”

“...I thought so.”

Kurt sighs. “Fine. As friends.”

“Of course! You know, if we played it right, you could make Blaine envious enough to actually do something about it.”

For a second Kurt is sorely tempted to give in to the relationship games he’s watched the members of New Directions play—and only occasionally contributed to—since he first joined glee. Then he remembers that Rachel is dressed up as Ryan because of them and shakes his head. “No. I’m not doing that.”

Rachel shrugs and goes back to making notes.

It’s nearing six o’clock before either of them even looks up from their books again. Rachel is the first to do so, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms over her head before getting to her feet. “I’m going to stretch my legs,” she announces. Kurt merely grunts in response, concentrating on balancing a chemical equation.

Rachel steps out of the dorm room and walks to the end of the hallway, spinning on her heel to walk back when she doesn’t see anyone down the connecting corridor. In doing so, she nearly slams directly into Wes, who holds up his hands as if to protect his face.

“Berry! Watch where you’re going!”

“Sorry,” Rachel says. “Have you seen Blaine? I need to ask him something.” When Wes raises an eyebrow at this, she adds, “For Kurt.”

“He’s moping over his cell phone in the cafeteria,” he says immediately. “It doesn’t look like he’s planning on moving for a solid hour. Or two.”

“Thanks!” Rachel says, flashing a grin at Wes and ducking around him to go back to her room.

“Wait, Ryan! Are you taking care of Pavarotti?” Wes calls after her.

“He’s warbling as well as ever!” Rachel throws over her shoulder. She ducks into the dorm and heads straight for Pavarotti’s cage, inspecting the little bird’s food and water to make sure that she wasn’t lying. She wasn’t. She then turns to Kurt and puts her hands on her hips. “Are you going to get ready to go?”

Kurt looks up at her, his eyes glazed. “I, er.” He puts down his pen and runs a hand over his hair. “I was just going to wear my uniform. Not like it’s anything special.”

Rachel adds a raised eyebrow to her practically patented stance. “Every moment of your life is an opportunity for fashion,” she says. “Get up. You need fashion therapy.” She grabs his arm and pushes him toward the closet.

He stumbles forward blearily. “But that’s what I say,” he mumbles. “That’s _my_ line.”

“Mercedes may have taken it to heart and repeated it a few times,” Rachel says, throwing open the closet door. “Snap out of your funk and make yourself look hot.”

“The periodic table has fried my brain,” Kurt says, running his hands over the familiar fabrics of his clothes. “And _you_ are actually channelling Mercedes. It’s freaking me out.” His face falls and his hands stop moving over the clothes. “I miss her,” he mumbles.

“You should go to Lima this weekend,” Rachel suggests.

“But I need to do homework,” he protests.

Rachel goes over to his desk and starts rifling through his papers. “Kurt, you’ve been working so hard that I’m nearly positive you did all of tomorrow’s scheduled allotment of work. You deserve to take a break.”

Kurt pulls a gray sweater out of his closet and eyes it critically before laying it on his bed. He then pulls out a white dress shirt and a pair of deep purple skinny jeans along with his tie rack. He starts rifling through the ties, muttering under his breath. Rachel watches, kind of fascinated by the way he knows exactly what he’s looking for.

“So, Lima tomorrow?” she presses. “I bet Mercedes would be really excited about seeing you.”

“Yeah, it’s a good idea,” Kurt says, pulling a tie nearly the same colour as the jeans off the rack and putting the rest back in the closet. “I’m going to go put these on and fix my hair in the bathroom.”

Rachel figures that she should probably use this time alone to change into something other than her Dalton uniform, but she has no idea what. She hasn’t had to dress Ryan in anything _but_ the uniform. Rachel Berry dresses in a cross between grandmother and toddler. How does that translate to Ryan Berry?

Rachel is still having her first fashion crisis in front of the closet when Kurt walks in, looking so much like his old self that Rachel kind of wants to cry about it.

“If fashion is so important, why are you still wearing your uniform?” Kurt says accusingly, tucking his own neatly folded uniform into a laundry bag.

“I don’t know what Ryan wears,” she says despondently, looking sadly down at her uniform.

Kurt nods understandingly. “I’ll handle this.”

In less than ten minutes Kurt has Ryan decked out in slightly baggy dark wash jeans, his New York City T-shirt from Empire State of Mind, and an oversized jacket that is extra oversized on Rachel. He’s tying his own classic Doc Martens while Rachel stares at herself in the mirror.

“I sort of think Ryan is sexy,” Rachel comments, turning to look over her shoulder at her back side.

Kurt rolls his eyes. “There’s that Berry ego. I wish you had better shoes, though. Too bad you have midget size feet.”

“Just because yours are unnaturally large,” Rachel scoffs, linking her arm into Kurt’s offered one and leading him out into the hallway. She surreptitiously makes sure they turn down the hallway that will ensure that they have to go through the cafeteria to get to the exit they need to go out to get to the student parking lot, tightening her grip on Kurt’s arm when he tries to protest and take a more direct path.

Rachel spots Blaine over in the far corner of the cafeteria the second they step into it. He’s staring down at the table top, turning something—his cell phone, she realizes—over and over in his hands. Essentially, he’s moping, just like Wes said.

Kurt’s fingernails digging into her arm through the coat alert her to the fact that he’s noticed Blaine as well. “Rachel,” he hisses in her ear, but another voice jumps in before he can continue.

“Ryan! Kurt!” Jeff waves his hand at them, indicating that they should sit at his table.

Rachel shakes her head. “Kurt and I are going downtown for dinner,” she announces louder than entirely necessary, clinging to Kurt. He attempts to shake her off to no avail.

“Oh,” Jeff says, nodding.

“Next time,” Rachel says cheerfully, continuing to pull Kurt toward the opposite end of the cafeteria. From the corner of her eye, she can definitely see Blaine watching them. Kurt sees him, too.

“I know what you’re doing,” he whispers furiously. “I told you _no_.”

“Shut up, Kurt. That boy needs some incentive to just act on his feelings,” she hisses back.

“ _What_ feelings?”

Rachel just rolls her eyes at him.

\---

Blaine is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and contemplating the meaning of his existence, when there’s a brisk knock at his door. He rolls over and looks at the clock, wondering who in their right mind would be visiting other people’s dorm rooms at nine in the morning on Saturday. His desire to know the answer to this question is the only reason he bothers getting up to open the door.

That and the possibility that it might be Kurt.

It’s not Kurt. It’s Kurt’s roommate.

“Ryan?” Blaine asks.

“Hello. I hope I didn’t wake you up?”

Blaine shakes his head.

“Great!” Rachel lets herself in and shuts the door smartly behind her. “Roommate gone home for the weekend, I see,” she says, nodding her head to the neatly made bed across the room.

“Yeah. Why—“

“Kurt just left for Lima,” Rachel continues. “And I thought I would take this opportunity to come talk to you.”

“About what?” Blaine asks, staring at Rachel in confusion.

“I’m not taking history this semester, but I took the liberty of talking to your teacher,” Rachel says accusingly. Understanding starts to creep across Blaine’s face. “You handed in your paper on time. In fact, I think he said you had it done two days early.”

Blaine just continues to stare down at her. He has no idea what he’s supposed to say to that. He really has no explanation for why he lied to Kurt, and he’s assuming that’s what Ryan is there for.

Surprisingly, the next words out of Rachel’s mouth are “I don’t need an explanation. Anyone with eyes can see that you like Kurt. You’re just afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Blaine asks defensively.

“Kurt. How you feel about Kurt. Being yourself. Ditching the walls you’ve built up around yourself. It’s really a tossup between any of those.”

“Or all of them,” Blaine mutters, sitting down heavily on the edge of his bed. “What am I supposed to do about it? Kurt must hate me for lying to him.”

“Lucky for you, Kurt is almost as thick as you are,” Rachel says matter-of-factly. “He has no idea what’s going on with you. He just knows that he doesn’t like it.”

Blaine groans and buries his face in his hands.

“Sometimes I start to suspect that neither of you have eyes...” Rachel muses.

“What are you talking about?” Blaine asks, his voice muffled by his hands.

Rachel sighs dramatically. “Never mind. What are you going to do about Kurt?”

“I don’t know what there is to do,” Blaine says, running a hand through his hair and flopping back onto his bed. He immediately sits up again and narrows his eyes at Rachel. “Why do you care, anyway? You two went out last night, didn’t you?”

Rachel shrugs. “Kurt’s not my type. I’m more into... jocks.” She shoves the image of Finn in his football uniform out of her mind. Blaine looks intensely relieved. That is not good—he needs motivation. “I’m beginning to think I might be _his_ type, though,” Rachel improvises. “So I’m just warning you to get a move on... he’s not going to wait forever.” It’s a rather large lie—Kurt has been known to pine after his crush for years.

“What do you suggest I do, then?”

“First off, stop avoiding him. He’s going to have an aneurysm from worrying about what he’s done wrong at this rate. Reschedule dinner and actually go this time.”

“Okay,” Blaine says, his voice wavering a bit. “I can do that.”

“Talk to him for more than three minutes at a time and attempt to not spout metaphor at him.”

“He makes me nervous.”

“Just... act like you do at two-thirty in the morning when Kurt’s just woken up from a nightmare. Be yourself.” Rachel gives Blaine her most encouraging tooth-flashing smile.

“Right. Myself.” Blaine returns the smile weakly. “Thank you, Ryan.”

“Anything to stop Kurt’s moping about our room. See you at Warblers rehearsal later?”

“Will Kurt be back by then?”

“He said he would. He’s just getting in some retail therapy with Mercedes.”

Blaine nods. “See you later.”

“Bye!” Rachel says cheerfully, bouncing out the door and shutting it behind her.

Blaine lies back on his bed and returns to contemplating—this time his feelings for Kurt. He knows he loves spending time with him—their twin-minded personalities make talking about things like Vogue thirty times more exciting than it would be with anyone else. There’s just something about hearing his exact thoughts spill out of Kurt’s mouth in meticulously phrased sentences that Blaine is in love with. He sees so much of himself in Kurt that it sometimes scares him. He knows how Kurt feels firsthand, and it makes him want to lock Kurt away where no one can even touch him.

That’s sort of what’s happened, Blaine muses. Dalton is keeping Kurt hidden away. Unfortunately, that means that everything that makes Kurt _Kurt_ is hidden away as well—everything that Blaine likes about him is buried underneath navy blue fabric and red trim.

Blaine wants to show Kurt that it’s okay to be himself, even if no one laughs at his jokes or his ideas get shot down, and he figures the best way to do that would be to lead by example.

The problem is, Blaine’s so used to hiding who he is when he’s at Dalton that he doesn’t know how to not. Not even for Kurt.

\---

"How are you doing, Kurt?" Mercedes asks, quite suddenly, in the middle of The Body Shop.

Kurt looks up from the display of moisturizers he's been going through with obvious disdain. "I'm fine, past the fact that I think I might puke into my hat if we don't get out of this entirely too fragrant store."

Mercedes rolls her eyes. "You know that's not what I meant."

He straightens up and sprays a random burst of body spray at Mercedes before looking at the label. "Hm, Neroli Jasmin. More like my grandmother's grave." He grabs Mercedes' hand and pulls her out of the store, waving his hand like it will prevent the process of diffusion.

"You're avoiding the question," Mercedes says, allowing herself to be pulled down the mall hallway.

"I'm fine, Mercedes," Kurt insists.

"Then why are you dragging me through the mall like you just heard about a limited time sale?" Kurt immediately slows down, dropping Mercedes' hand in favour of linking their arms together. Mercedes feels a rush of nostalgia and tries not to consider how pathetic that is. "I know you well enough to know when you're lying, Kurt."

"I'm not lying," he protests, pulling her into a line for Orange Julius.

"No, you're not," Mercedes concedes. "But you're keeping something from me."

Kurt sighs. "Do we have to talk about this now?"

"When else are we going to talk about it? Over Skype? I don't think so."

Kurt's expression has gone oddly blank, the same way it used to every time he prepared himself to be thrown into the dumpster. Mercedes wasn't often present for that, but the times she was it was always the same routine—a snarky comment and then nothing, because Kurt didn't want them to see how dumpster diving really made him feel.

Mercedes feels hurt that she's being looked at the way he looks at his bullies.

They don't say anything to each other for the few minutes it takes to order their drinks—a classic Orange Julius for Mercedes and a Tropical Sunlight for Kurt—and find a table in the food court.

"Do you remember when I played football?" Kurt asks when they're settled.

Mercedes furrows her eyebrows. "Of course. That was right after you came out to me. You kicked the winning field goal. People still talk about that."

"Ugh, really?" Kurt wrinkles his nose, then remembers his original point. "Right. Well, when I did that it felt amazing. Everyone was cheering for me, the other guys on the team had me on their shoulders... it felt amazing, but it didn't feel like me. I looked at my father applauding in the stands and all I could think about was how it was all a lie."

"So that's why you quit."

Kurt nods. "And that's how Dalton feels. Like, at Sectionals, when we tied, I was happy, but it was more because I knew that meant New Directions could continue, not because I was proud of the Warblers' performance. It felt amazing, but for all the wrong reasons."

"Oh, Kurt..." Mercedes sighs. Any hurt feelings she had have vaporized now. "You know we'd always take you back in a second, right?"

"Of course," Kurt says, sipping at his smoothie. "But I can't go back to McKinley while Karofsky is there. I just can't."

Mercedes nods. "I get it."

"Anyway, there's your answer. Tell me some McKinley stories."

Mercedes rolls her eyes. "It's your regular old shit storm. Ever since Rachel left Mr. Schue has been on our case about finding a new twelfth member, but no one's even been trying. I think we're all in denial—I know I keep expecting Rachel to storm into the choir room and demand she perform six solos for Regionals." Mercedes pauses to drink some of her Orange Julius. "You haven't heard from her at all, have you?"

"What, me? No. Why would she contact me? And don't you think I would tell you right away?"

"It just seemed like you and her were sort of starting to be friends," Mercedes says defensively.

"Well, that was before she ran away from her insecurities, wasn't it," Kurt says scathingly. "Come on, I want to check out a few more stores before I have to get back for Warblers practice."

"I still think it's crazy that you practice on Saturdays," Mercedes says.

Kurt just shrugs and offers his arm to Mercedes. She takes it.

\---

Blaine has been leaning against the wall outside the rehearsal room for five minutes before Kurt rounds the corner, his feet skidding on the tile floor, nearly dropping his messenger bag in his haste.

"Blaine," he says, out of breath. "I'm not late, am I?"

Blaine looks at his pocket watch. "Nope, you made it just in time."

"Oh, thank Gaga. I thought Wes might bash me over the head with his gavel."

"He hasn't been violent with it before," Blaine says thoughtfully. "But there's always the first time."

Kurt sighs and smoothes his hands down the front of his black jacket, then freezes. "I'm not in uniform!"

Blaine laughs at the panicked look on Kurt's face. "I'll protect you from the evils of the gavel, don't worry."

Kurt smiles at Blaine hesitantly. "Um, thanks."

Blaine takes Kurt's hand casually and pushes open the door with his back, letting Kurt walk in just before him. No later than the moment the door clicks shut behind them does Wes tap the gavel against the table and call the meeting to order. All the seats are taken, so Blaine and Kurt lean against a wall.

Neither of them hear a word David is saying about their options for the Regionals set list—they’re too fixated on their joined hands, each of them obsessing over what it means and if the other even notices and if they should let go or not.

Rachel is clear across the room, but she thinks she can see their every thought flashing across their faces. It's quite infuriating, and if she were less civilized, she would bash their heads together.

Kurt finally decides to drop Blaine's hand when Wes calls for them to get into formation for their rendition of, ironically, Akon's ‘Hold My Hand’. Blaine wishes he hadn't, but rationalizes that at least it was at the last possible moment and thus obviously not a rejection of Blaine himself.

The group hums the first note of the melody together, then breaks off into harmony. Blaine jumps in with the lead vocals right on cue, but it's taking him all the effort he has to both remember the words and sing them at the right pitch with the right rhythm while simultaneously ignoring Kurt's presence just behind his left shoulder. The rest of the Warblers aren't being much help, either—the snapping that's supposed to define the beat is all over the place and the harmonies are out of sync.

Rachel lets Blaine get past the first 'hold my hand' (which he manages to nail, though he can't say much for the backup that's supposed to join in) before she stops singing alto harmony and steps out of formation, shaking her head. Kurt spots the imminent bitch fit and also stops singing. The rest of the Warblers taper off when Blaine trips over "I'll do all I can", making it sound more like "I can all I do", and stops completely in favour of staring at Rachel.

"Ryan, what are you doing out of formation?" Wes asks accusingly.

"What your beloved council should be doing—criticizing the performance."

"With all due respect—which isn't much, seeing as you've only been here for a week—you've only been here for a week. You can't possibly know enough about our dynamic to be able to criticize," David retorts.

"I have a _very_ good ear. I can tell when music doesn't sound good. I've heard cats sing with more heart than Blaine just had, and not the kind from the musical, either. The tenor section was entirely lacking, mostly because I'm fairly sure that Nick wasn't even singing and the rest of the tenors get their mark from him."

"I wasn't," Nick contributes. "I think you forgot to give me the sheet music for this song."

"See? And that leads me to the song choice in general—it’s just not good. Sure, it arranges into a cappella really well, but I feel like no one here wants to sing about holding hands. Blaine's voice doesn't suit the lead vocals well _at all_."

"He's right," Blaine says. "I can't really pull this off."

Kurt, who has been hiding his smirk behind his hand since Rachel said 'very', lets out something close to a giggle. Everyone looks at him. "Sorry," he says, clearing his throat.

"Kurt," Wes says slowly, "why aren't you in uniform?

"Oh, um." Kurt looks down at himself and tries to take comfort in the fact that Wes is _not_ currently holding his gavel. "I went to Lima this afternoon and didn't have time to change before rehearsal."

Blaine glares at Wes as if daring him to challenge Kurt. Wes shifts awkwardly under the stare.

"Back to the matter at hand," Rachel says loudly, "what are we going to do about this disaster of a song?"

The Warblers erupt into a frenzy of ideas. Everyone seems to have a different idea, and Rachel fields them all with the expertise of someone who is extremely experienced. It's kind of mind boggling to Kurt—in New Directions, Rachel would just take over everything without listening to anyone, but here with the Warblers, she's actually considering the suggestions—even, once, asking the council members if they thought something would be all right.

At first, Kurt just wants to know where the hell Rachel Berry has gone. After awhile, though, he starts to see her—that smirk she gets when she's in the spotlight, the self-satisfaction in her expression after Mr. Schuester compliments her on something.

There's still something missing, though, and he can't figure out what.

\---

Rachel is making her way back to the dormitories on Tuesday evening after a study session in the library when she turns a corner and runs into a wall that’s not supposed to be there. She just barely stops herself from falling flat on her ass, which, unfortunately, involves arm flailing, and since her arms were holding a stack of books, said books are now all over the ground.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” The brick wall Rachel slammed into bends down to help her pick up her books. As he straightens up and hands her her biology textbook his eyes widen. “Rachel?”

“Finn,” she says coolly, taking the book.

“What happened to—I mean, your dads said you transferred schools, but they wouldn’t say where.”

Rachel has never been more grateful for the fact that the library is in a separate building, which means she has a bulky winter jacket covering her uniform, before. And maybe for her modified hair, which Finn seems to have taken to staring at.

“What are you doing at Dalton?” Finn asks her hair.

“I could ask you the same.”

“Kurt goes to school here. I’m bringing him some stuff from home he asked for.”

“I was helping him with his harmonies for Warblers,” Rachel counters quickly. It’s not entirely a lie—she does help him with harmonies pretty often.

Finn’s eyes widen. “You’re helping the enemy. Rachel—“

“They’re not the enemy anymore. I’m no longer a member of New Directions.”

“About that—it’s really not the same without you. You didn’t transfer because of me, did you? Because I think that would be, like, really stupid because it was you, not me, and—“

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Finn,” Rachel snaps. “I have to go.”

She pushes past him and turns down the wrong hallway, planning to go hide out until Finn is sure to have left.

Because the truth is... her world sort of does revolve around him. And she hates herself for it.

\---

“Why didn’t you tell me that Finn was going to be here?”

Kurt looks up at a raging Rachel Berry from the magazine he’s flipping through. “Sorry, princess, I didn’t realize the world revolved around you. And besides, he surprised me. Where have you been?”

“Hiding in the chem lab,” Rachel says. “I ran into Finn on his way to see you when I was coming back here from the library.”

“You saw him? And _he_ saw _you_? How has the universe not imploded? By which I mean, how is it that you’re still wearing a Dalton uniform rather than back in your tacky pink sweaters, ready to crawl back to McKinley?”

“I told him I was here to help you with your harmonies.”

“And he bought that?”

“I was wearing a jacket over my uniform.”

“Still. It had to have been at least seven-thirty already. What would you have been doing here at that time?”

Rachel shrugs. “Finn is a bit dim, you and I both know that.”

“Do we ever. How can he be so stupid and yet so adorable?”

“I ask myself that every day.” Rachel lies down on her bed, burying her face into her pillow and fighting the urge to scream.

Kurt closes his magazine and puts it down on his desk before leaning forward, elbows on his knees and head propped on his fists. “Wait, so, if he saw you... that means he saw your hair. How did he feel about that?”

“He wouldn’t stop staring at it,” Rachel admits, turning her head to look at Kurt.

Kurt laughs so hard at the idea of Finn just staring at Rachel’s hair that he feels like his lungs are ripping open. Rachel tries to pretend she doesn’t get what’s so funny, but she eventually joins in when her mental image of Finn’s face actually drifts up through her memory.

"His face _was_ pretty hilarious," Rachel says when the laughter has finally tapered off, nearly sending Kurt back into hysterics.

"Stop," he chokes out, wiping his watering eyes with a tissue. "Don't mention it again."

"Fine, fine. Tell me about Blaine." Rachel sits up on her bed, hugging her pillow to her chest.

"What about him?" Kurt asks, tossing the tissue in his garbage can and leaning back in his desk chair.

"How's he been lately? I've noticed that you two seem to be hanging out more often."

Kurt brightens. "Yeah, he's been acting more like himself. We had a proper conversation about fashion on the red carpet and then he actually got excited about Neil Patrick Harris. I mentioned him last week and Blaine just changed the subject to something about the Warblers. I was starting to lose my faith in him."

"Good! That's really good," Rachel says, smiling. There’s an only slightly awkward pause in which Kurt stares at Rachel and Rachel stares at Kurt before Kurt looks at the clock and stands up quickly.

“How can it be ten already? I’m going to have to cut my moisturizing routine in half!” He’s vacated the room before Rachel can snap back that of course it’s ten, she spent at least an hour and a half breathing in chemicals.

She drags herself off her bed and changes into her pyjamas, crawling under her blankets on the off chance that someone might come in and realize that Ryan is Rachel.

When Kurt comes back into the room, face flushed slightly pink and hair all over the place, looking for all the world like a ten year old, Rachel immediately sits up and says, “You need to ask Blaine out.”

Kurt stops in the middle of the room and turns to look at her. “What?”

Rachel rolls her eyes. “Kurt, you have a crush on him. He has a crush on you. It’s the logical next step.”

“Wha—Blaine doesn’t—I mean... _what_?”

“Denial, Kurt. You’re in _denial_. Blaine _likes_ you. Why do you think he keeps holding your hand and being protective?”

“He’s a natural flirt?” Kurt says weakly.

“Kurt, trust me on this. Ask Blaine if he wants to go on a date. Use the word ‘date’. Otherwise he’ll think it’s just another friendly dinner.”

“Rachel, how is it that your own love life is a train wreck, yet your advice still seems to make sense?”

Rachel just shrugs and lies back down, grabbing her eye mask and headphones and putting them on.

Kurt shakes his head and crawls into his own bed with his magazine.

\---

Kurt is in the middle of rhapsodizing about the genius of Gaga’s latest fashion scandal on Thursday evening when he suddenly stops talking and just looks at Blaine. They’re hanging out in Blaine’s dorm room because his roommate is forever off somewhere, French textbooks laid out in front of them on the pretence that Blaine is actually helping Kurt rather than just listening to him talk about fashion.

“What?” Blaine asks of Kurt’s sudden silence. “Did you suddenly realize that Lady Gaga, while a significant style icon and inspiration, has nothing to do with the passé composé?

Kurt scoffs. “I think that might’ve been the reason I started talking about her in the first place. I may be able to sing fifteen minutes worth of French Celine Dion, but that doesn’t mean I actually understand what the words coming out of my mouth are.”

“So what’s up then?”

“Uh...” Kurt stares at the floor. “Never mind.” He wants to launch back into his rant as a distraction, but he can’t for the life of him remember where he’d been when he’d been distracted by Blaine’s utter perfection.

Blaine raises an eyebrow. “Are you okay, Kurt? Is something bothering you?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry. How about that past tense, then?”

“Now I know something’s wrong. You’re asking to study French without implying that you’re only going to pretend—that is not normal behaviour. Tell me, Kurt.”

Kurt shifts awkwardly in his chair. “It’s nothing,” he insists. His prior urge to listen to Rachel’s advice has gone out the window. This wouldn’t be an immediate issue if it Blaine wasn’t so damn persistent.

“I don’t believe you,” Blaine presses. “Come on, Kurt. It’s not something about Dalton, is it? Because I thought you were really starting to settle in, especially since Ryan showed up. Or—did Karofsky do something somehow? Kurt, if—“

“Will you go out with me?” Kurt blurts out.

Blaine snaps his mouth shut and stares at Kurt. “What did you say?”

Kurt closes his eyes. “I asked if you wanted to go out with me,” he mumbles.

Blaine thinks he must be dreaming. “Go out—you mean, like—“

“—on a date, yeah,” Kurt finishes, opening his eyes but still avoiding eye contact with Blaine.

“Kurt, are you sure? I mean—“

“Yes, I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be? You can say no if you want; I’m not stopping you.”

“No! I mean, _shit_ , Kurt, yes, I want to go out with you. Where are we going?”

Blaine is rewarded with the biggest smile he’s ever seen on Kurt’s face. “I don’t know, where would you want to go?”

“Shouldn’t you have an idea? You did ask.”

“Hey, you practically forced me to. I couldn’t let you start thinking that Karofsky was still actively after me.”

“Touché.”

Kurt purses his lips. “We could go to Breadstix.”

“You want to?”

“Sort of. It’s kind of Lima’s date hot spot... We might run into Karofsky or something, though.” He worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Let’s go to Breadstix,” Blaine says decisively. “Screw the haters. If Karofsky shows up we’ll just try not to provoke him.”

“I think our courage provokes him,” Kurt says wanly. “And it’s not like we can do anything about that.”

“Hey, it’s not our fault he’s in Narnia.”

Kurt snorts.

“If you’re really worried about it, we could just go somewhere in Westerville.”

“No—I’ve always wanted to be the one getting ready for their hot Friday night date at Breadstix. I’m not going to let Karofsky take that from me. Courage, right?”

“If you’re sure,” Blaine says, flashing a smile at Kurt.

Kurt smiles back.

\---

Rachel is working on arranging a song to better fit show choir and definitely not thinking about how good Finn’s voice would sound singing the lead when Kurt bursts into the room and slams the door behind him. She jumps, causing a piece of sheet music to fly off her desk and into the path of Kurt’s thrown textbook. Rachel watches in dismay as it crumples when they both hit the floor and Kurt throws himself onto his bed and screams into his pillow.

“What’s wrong?” Rachel asks, utterly befuddled by Kurt’s behaviour. She rescues the sheet music, smoothing it out carefully.

“Nothing,” Kurt says, sitting up and hugging his pillow to his chest in a very Rachel-like fashion.

Rachel raises her eyebrows. “You just ran into the room like you were on fire and screamed into your pillow.”

“That doesn’t mean that anything is _wrong_ ,” Kurt says indignantly.

Rachel just looks at him, tapping a finger impatiently against the desk.

“I asked Blaine out,” he finally admits, a soppy grin plastered on his face.

Rachel gasps. “And he said no!”

“What? No, he said yes! We’re going to Breadstix tomorrow.”

She lets out an entirely too girly squeal and throws herself at Kurt. “Ohmigod, that’s so amazing! What did I tell you?”

Kurt gives Rachel an awkward pat on the back and disentangles himself from her arms. “I know. I suppose I have to thank you—but not until I actually go on the date,” he amends. “Stop squealing, you’re supposed to be a guy.”

“There’s no one else in here.”

“Someone could hear out in the hallway,” Kurt argues, but Rachel can tell that he’s not really worried, just teasing.

“Ryan is very camp. Everyone is aware of that.” Rachel settles herself on the end of Kurt’s bed, legs crossed, and looks at him expectantly. “Come on, tell me exactly what was said.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “I was avoiding French by talking about Lady Gaga—“

“Typical.”

“—and I got distracted and—“

“By what?”

Kurt’s cheeks flush pink. “He had this piece of hair falling out of his gel... and the look on his face was like...” He gestures futilely with his hands.

Rachel totally gets this. Finn might not have long enough hair for it to fall in his face, but it’s still really sexy when it’s all mussed up... And Finn has the best facial expressions. She tries and fails to not think about the look he gave her before he walked away from her after she told him about Puck.

“Right, so then what?”

“I tried to get him to teach me some French and he was convinced that there was something terribly wrong—“

“I would be too if you asked to study French.”

“Why do you people keep saying that? You don’t even take French.”

Rachel shrugs.

“ _Anyway_ , he was about to rant about Karofsky—never mention him around Blaine, by the way, he can honestly go on about it for hours—and I had to shut him up so I just asked.”

“I bet that worked like a charm.”

Kurt lets out something like a giggle-snort. “It did, yeah.”

“So what are you planning on wearing?” Rachel asks, grinning mischievously.

Kurt’s eyes widen. “I don’t know.”

“There’s a first,” Rachel says, trying not to laugh.

“I mean, I have tons of ideas, but I keep finding fault in every outfit I think of.” He looks so lost that Rachel just can’t help it anymore and bursts into laughter. “It’s not funny!”

“It is!” Rachel gasps out. “Sometimes I think you’re more camp than _Ryan_.”

“I am not, seeing as Ryan is you and you have less fashion sense than I contain in my left pinky finger!”

That just makes Rachel laugh harder. “Do you... do you know where I got the name Ryan from?”

Kurt frowns. “No. It’s just a name, isn’t it?”

“It’s after the guy from High School Musical,” Rachel tells him, quite serious now. Kurt looks confused, which provokes an annoyed sigh. “Didn’t you ever watch it?”

“Yes... but only once and only because I had a very hidden crush on Zac Efron.”

“I’m keeping that information as blackmail. I bet Blaine would find that very interesting.”

“I was twelve! And you picked your drag name from it. You have zero leeway over me.”

Rachel makes a face at him. He hits her with his pillow.

“Get off my bed. We are no longer having an emotional discussion.”

“I wasn’t aware that we were in the first place,” Rachel grouses, getting up.

“You made me tell you all the details of my asking Blaine out and started in on fashion. I feel like I need to go score a few field goals to assert my manliness.”

Rachel rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so stuck on gender roles,” she says, even though she can tell that Kurt is only joking. “Besides, I didn’t hear you objecting.”

“Shut up,” Kurt mutters.

\---

Kurt pats down the sides of his white jacket and straightens his bow tie nervously. He spins his car keys around his fingers before catching them with a clenched fist and taking a deep breath. He lifts the fist and quickly knocks on Blaine’s door.

The door opens immediately to reveal a _very_ smartly dressed Blaine. Kurt tries not to make his sharp intake of breath totally obvious and probably fails. He’s seen Blaine out of uniform before, of course—however rare the sight may be, it’s still not avoidable when living in the same building—but he’s never seen him wearing jeans that border on the skinny variety. Or a T-shirt that tight, much less paired with that particular pea coat...

Okay, so maybe Blaine’s not exactly dressed _smart_ or even entirely stylish. But he’s still fucking hot, and Kurt is still having trouble remembering how to breathe.

Even though Blaine’s seen Kurt out of uniform about a million times before, there seems to be something different about this time. Maybe it’s the idea that they’re actually going on a date. Blaine might get to _kiss_ Kurt while Kurt is wearing those clothes and then they will forever be the clothes Kurt was wearing when Blaine first kissed him.

Blaine _has_ to stop thinking about kissing Kurt. He’s not going to make it through the date at this rate.

“Ready to go?” Kurt says, realizing that he’s probably been staring at Blaine for way too long.

“Uh, yeah,” Blaine says. “Just lemme grab my car keys...”

Kurt holds up his own keys and shakes them so they jangle together. “We’re taking my car,” he says.

Blaine frowns. “Are you sure? I mean, all that gas. And it’s not like it’s cheap, so—”

“I’m sure,” Kurt says firmly. “Let’s go.”

Blaine decides that arguing likely isn’t worth the trouble and nods, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets and following Kurt down the hallway.

They don’t say anything on the relatively short walk to Kurt’s car, and it’s entirely awkward by the time they’re both buckled in and Kurt is reversing out of his parking space.

Kurt taps his fingers nervously on the steering wheel and glances over at Blaine from the corner of his eyes. Blaine appears to be staring out the window, but is actually looking in the side mirror at a piece of hair that isn’t properly gelled. He tries to fix it, but spit doesn’t exactly have the same properties as Frederic Fekkai for Men.

He finally gives up when Kurt sighs to himself a bit too loudly for the situation (and promptly starts mentally freaking out about it, not that Blaine is aware of that part).

The awkwardness continues for about an hour (all right, it was actually five minutes, but it felt like an hour) before Blaine presses the power button on the stereo and the radio comes on, which prompts Kurt to recall that his iPod is somewhere in the vehicle.

“My iPod is somewhere in here,” Kurt says. “You could find it and plug it in.”

“Where is it?” Blaine asks, kind of freaked out by the idea of digging through Kurt’s stuff.

Kurt gestures at the space between the front seats. “Down there somewhere.”

Blaine shifts through the pile of stuff carefully, fearful that what looks like a disorganized heap is actually some sort of crazy organization system. He wouldn’t put it past Kurt. “I can’t find it,” he says after a few minutes of strategic rearrangement. He’s found more mini bottles of hand lotion than he cares to count, but no iPod.

Kurt has been watching Blaine’s search with one eye and is thoroughly amused. “You’d probably have more luck if you actually dug around. I promise that there’s nothing breakable in there.”

With this permission, Blaine attacks the area with renewed fervour and presently discovers the iPod hiding underneath a Kleenex box. “Why was it so buried in here, anyway?” he asks. “I would think you’d use it pretty often.”

“This one’s older. I got a new one for Christmas,” Kurt explains. “My dad ordered it before I transferred to Dalton.”

“Ah,” Blaine says, fumbling with the auxiliary cable and managing to plug it in properly. He selects ‘Shuffle Songs’ and set the iPod down in a cup holder as ‘Your Eyes’ from RENT comes on.

“The guy who played Rodger at the Community Playhouse really wasn’t very good,” Kurt says in an attempt to dispel that last bit of awkward tension that’s still floating around the Navigator.

“He could have been worse,” Blaine says, shrugging. “He definitely wasn’t top quality, though.” He ignores the fact that they’ve already had this discussion enough to make that comment, but when Kurt tries to continue with the subject, he just shrugs. The Community Playhouse seems so far away, like he and Kurt were entirely different people back when they went there together. It’s only been about two months, but it seems like years to Blaine.

Kurt sighs in frustration and wracks his brain for a conversation topic. It would figure that when they’re actually going on a date they run out of things to talk about. He needs that block of dinner table topics he gave Carole for Christmas.

‘Your Eyes’ ends and another song comes on. Kurt recognizes the beginning immediately and tries to hit the next button, but Blaine manages to grab the iPod first, a huge grin on his face.

“I can’t believe you have ‘Whip My Hair’ on your iPod!”

Kurt glares at Blaine as much as he can while still keeping his attention on the road. He’s about to make a comment about Katy Perry and her abundant presence on Blaine’s iPod when the song segues back into the chorus and all of a sudden Blaine is yelling (not singing) “I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth” and flailing in his seat.

Kurt almost has to pull over because he’s laughing so hard.

Just like that, all the awkward tension is gone. The rest of the drive to Lima consists of loud singing and even louder music. By the time Kurt pulls into the parking lot by Breadstix, his cheeks and abs hurt from laughing so much and his throat is sore from singing. Blaine is in much the same predicament.

Kurt grabs his phone and notes that there are three texts from Mercedes. He considers checking them for a moment, but decides that he needs to focus on the date. Mercedes will understand. He shoves his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket along with his car keys just in time to meet Blaine at the front of the car and grab his hand, leading him into Breadstix.

Blaine looks at their joined hands almost the entire time they’re being seated, just marvelling over the fact that Kurt is comfortable enough to do something like that in public. It’s not the same as when they do it at Dalton—when they’re there, no one can say anything even if they want to. This is something else. He misses Kurt’s warmth when Kurt lets go to sit across the booth from him.

And promptly forgets about that when the side of Kurt’s leg presses up against his thigh.

Kurt grins devilishly over the top of his menu at Blaine. He’s feeling way too high on cheesy music and Blaine’s cheesy car dance moves. “What are you getting?” he asks, all innocence.

“I, er... I don’t know,” Blaine says, attempting to maintain composure.

Their server comes by and they both order Diet Cokes before going back to looking at their menus. The awkward tension from the beginning of the car ride is slowing seeping back into the air, despite the current contact, and both boys want nothing more than to get rid of it, yet neither of them know how to do so.

“Any, erm, recommendations?” Blaine asks.

Kurt purses his lips at his menu. “Salad? This place is very carb oriented, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Blaine laughs a little at that. “Yeah, the breadsticks always were a bit of a giveaway.” He picks one up and pokes Kurt in the nose with it, earning himself a swat on the hand and a glare, before breaking it in half and offering one half to Kurt, earning himself a slightly scrunched up nose and a reluctant acceptance.

Kurt even eats it instead of setting it to the side and pretending to forget about it, which kind of blows Blaine’s mind. He expresses that thought to Kurt, who just rolls his eyes. “The place is called Breadstix for a reason. They are pretty fabulous—just not as fabulous as Santana likes to make them out as.”

“Santana—the one who killed ‘Valerie’ at Sectionals, right?”

Kurt nods. “She has an unhealthy obsession with this restaurant. I think she lives on breadsticks and Coach Sylvester’s Master Cleanse. Which should not be possible. Or even legal.”

Blaine decides that he doesn’t want to know what ‘Master Cleanse’ is and just nods when Kurt launches into a description of the whole drama with the duet competition. It’s surprisingly complex and Blaine really only latches onto the fact that Kurt performed a duet with himself and sang ‘Le Jazz Hot’ to do so.

He wants video footage, and he wants it stat. He wonders if he could get it from Ryan—his sister _is_ part of New Directions and therefore would likely have access to such a thing if it happened to exist. He’ll even take just the audio. Or maybe he can convince Kurt to sing it for him live...

Their server comes by again with their drinks and asks if they’re ready to order, which they’re not, but it effectively ends Kurt’s rambling and prompts Blaine to say “Why exactly is McKinley a soap opera, anyway?”

Kurt laughs and shrugs. “I’d sort of accepted that the TV shows tell it right, but your skepticism and that of anyone I’ve ever met that doesn’t go to McKinley is throwing me off.”

Blaine just shakes his head, and they both go back to actually looking at the menu. Kurt’s phone vibrates in his pocket, but he ignores it, assuming that it’s just Mercedes texting him again.

Kurt orders salad when the waitress comes back and Blaine points randomly to something on the pasta page.

“What if you’re allergic?” Kurt asks accusingly. His phone vibrates in his pocket and he ignores it.

“Allergic to what?” Blaine asks, screwing his face up.

“Whatever you just ordered. All you did was point at the menu!”

Blaine shrugs. Kurt’s phone vibrates again. “I’m not allergic to anything. And your chest keeps vibrating.”

“You’re not allergic to anything you’ve _encountered_. What if Breadstix uses some obscure ingredient? And I know. It’s just someone texting me.”

“If Breadstix used some sort of obscure ingredient, I don’t think I would have been any better informed about it by reading the menu, anyway. And why don’t you text them back, then?”

Kurt pulls his phone out of his pocket. “It’s just Mercedes. She’ll understand why I’m ignoring her.” His phone vibrates with yet another text, but he resolutely shuts it down and tucks it back in his jacket.

“Why _are_ you ignoring her?” Blaine asks, quirking an eyebrow in Kurt’s direction. “I seem to remember that not turning out so well the last time.”

Kurt’s cheeks turn a light shade of pink. “Because I’m on a date with you, silly. It would be rude to ask you out and then ignore you all night.”

“True enough,” Blaine says, trying not to obsess too much over the implications of that. He already knew Kurt really liked him because of the way he’d been neglecting Mercedes back when they’d first met. Also there was the part where he’d asked him out on a date. But that wasn’t really relevant at the moment. “You are still getting along with your McKinley friends, right? I don’t want to feel like we’ve stolen you. Or that Karof—“

“Don’t start,” Kurt interrupts, not wanting to let Blaine sully their date with a Karofsky rant. “I’m getting along with them as well as I ever do. Better, actually. It’s easier to associate when you’re not in the middle of the soap opera, I suppose.”

Blaine nods. “You’re even friends with Rachel now, right? You were talking at Sectionals, anyway.”

Kurt shifts awkwardly in his seat, which coincidentally pushes his leg even closer to Blaine’s. He doesn’t bother to move it away again. “Yeah. Apparently we can get along since we’re not competition anymore.”

“But—you were part of the same team before. You’re competing against each other now.”

Kurt shakes his head quickly. “Sure, but now I’m not trying to take away her solos.”

“Oh. Right. New Directions is really competitive like that.” Blaine is trying to ignore Kurt’s leg against his own and failing rather immensely. He shifts away a little, trying to clear the haze that’s gathered in his head.

Kurt would be offended by this, but he’s actually kind of glad for it. After all, it’s not like he doesn’t have his own lust induced haze going on.

They fall into easy conversation, as always, discussing which Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals they desperately want to see, which competitors they favour on America’s Next Top Model, hair products—that one is prompted by the same piece of hair Blaine had been trying to fix before falling rudely into his face and Kurt reaching over to try and help him fix it. That’s what’s different about this conversation when it’s compared to the ones they’ve had before—there’s a lot more casual touching that isn’t really casual anymore.

The waitress brings them their food and Kurt insists that Blaine has to thoroughly check his pasta to make sure he’s not allergic to it before he eats it. Blaine decides that the best way for him to do so would be by feeding it to Kurt first—and Kurt is a hopeless romantic, so he doesn’t object. Much.

“Would you look at that. Fancy’s got himself another little fairy to feed him. Isn’t that cute.”

Blaine pulls the fork he’d just stuck in Kurt’s mouth away faster than he’d originally meant to. Kurt curses his luck that his mouth has to be full of pasta right when the only thing that could ruin the date faster than a rant about Karofsky shows up.

That is, Karofsky himself.

Blaine hasn’t seen Karofsky since back in November, but he’s not surprised that he still wants to beat the jock’s face in just as much as he did before. The only thing that stops him from launching himself out of the booth and directly at the boy that’s jeering down at him and Kurt is the shake of Kurt’s head that he just barely catches out of the corner of his eye.

Kurt manages to swallow the pasta and says to Blaine, “I think it’s fine.”

“Thanks,” Blaine says quietly, his eyes flicking over to Karofsky without his permission. He’s not looking at them anymore, but instead across the restaurant at what must be whoever he came here with. Blaine chances a look in that direction and spots a brunette cheerleader sitting at a two person table by herself, arms crossed over her chest and eyebrows raised in Karofsky’s direction. Blaine looks back to see Karofsky signalling for her to wait a minute.

“Is there something you want?” Kurt asks, looking up at Karofsky for the first time as he tensely pushes around some lettuce on his plate.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, there is,” Karofsky says. “I want to know what gives you the right to be rubbing your _gay_ in my face.”

Kurt raises his eyebrows and puts down his fork. “I wasn’t rubbing anything in your face. _You’re_ the one who came over _here_. I didn’t invite you along on my date.”

Blaine can just _see_ exactly where the rest of that is going if Karofsky says anything more to Kurt, and the redness of Karofsky’s face implies that he is, indeed, going to say more to Kurt. So he says the first thing that pops into his head and manages to bypass his internal filter.

“I wish we could all get along like we used to in middle school...”

Both Kurt and Karofsky look over at Blaine incredulously.

“I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy...” Blaine continues, painting on a wistful face and sighing.

Kurt bites back a laugh when he realizes what exactly Blaine is quoting. Karofsky just looks confused.

“Get back to your girlfriend, Karofsky,” Blaine says. “You don’t even go here.”

At that Kurt laughs out loud.

“Errr...” Karofsky mumbles, trying to figure out what exactly he’s supposed to say to the fairy. He thinks that he might be even stranger than Hummel. Finally he just gives up and walks away, leaving Kurt and Blaine with a particularly vicious glare and a brandish of The Fury, adding a taste of the bird at the last second.

“Fuck me...” Kurt mutters. “Yeah, I’m sure you’d like that...”

Blaine nearly snorts his nonchalant sip of Diet Coke out his nose.

“That was genius, Blaine,” Kurt adds, speaking louder now.

“Thank you, thank you. I do try,” Blaine says in a posh tone that’s slightly ruined by the gigantic grin he can’t seem to wipe off his face.

It’s all right, though, because Kurt is flashing a grin just as wide back at Blaine.

\---

Kurt is not so much studying as reliving every second of his date with Blaine when his daydreaming reminds him of the fact that Mercedes had been texting him last night and he should really get on replying to her. He fishes his phone out of his jacket and turns it on.

And then he puts it down on his desk and watches it vibrate for at least a minute straight. When he’s fairly sure that it’s done he picks it up again. He has twelve missed calls and thirty-one text messages. They’re not all from Mercedes—there are a few from Tina and Brittany, even one from Finn.

He opens the first ones Mercedes sent him, which are basically asking Kurt to please call her. He decides to do so rather than read the rest of the texts.

“What up?” Mercedes answers.

“Your texts are what’s up,” Kurt says.

“Kurt!” she exclaims. “Where have you been?”

“I was out last night,” he says, carefully avoiding mentioning Blaine, not because he’s hiding it from her, but because he knows that if he says he was on a date she’ll get distracted and he won’t find out what the big story is. “Why is my phone overloaded with texts?”

“Figgins shut down glee!”

“ _What_?”

“You know how I was telling you how we were all slacking off on finding a twelfth member? No one ever stepped up to the plate and Figgins just told Mr. Schue yesterday that glee is officially disbanded.”

Kurt doesn’t know what to say. He just sits in his desk chair, his mouth hanging open a little, utterly dumbstruck. He knows that without New Directions McKinley isn’t a good place for any of its members. The jocks and cheerleaders need glee to counterbalance the pressure from everyone in their social circles, and without their association with the less popular members of the club, well, it’s safe to say that dumpster diving will likely be coming back into play.

Not to mention the slushies. Kurt likes to think that what led to his slushie suicide would never happen again, but without glee...

“—so our only hope is if Rachel decides to waltz back in and—Kurt? Are you still there?”

The sound of Rachel’s name has launched Kurt into action; he’s storming out of his dorm room, dead set on finding Rachel and chewing her out. “I’m going to fix this, okay, Mercedes? I’ll call you back.”

He hangs up before she can say anything else and shoves his phone into the pocket of his blazer. He spots David just across the hallway and goes over to him. “Have you seen Ryan?” he asks quickly.

“Um, I think he was in the rehearsal room practicing something with Nick?”

“Thanks, David,” Kurt says, almost running down the hall.

David watches him go, just a bit confused.

Kurt takes a shortcut and enters the rehearsal room through the back doors, nearly tripping on the third step down in his haste. He slams the double doors open and settles his glare on Rachel, who jumps and looks up from her ever present sheet music in surprise.

“Kurt,” she says. “I thought you were studying?”

Kurt shifts his focus to Nick, who is sitting across the table from Rachel. “Nick, could you leave me and Ryan to talk for a minute?”

“Is everything all right, man?” Nick asks, looking apprehensively from Rachel to Kurt.

“It’s fine,” Kurt says through clenched teeth. “I just have to talk to him about something... about his sister.”

Rachel starts at that, whereas Nick just nods in understanding. “All right. We can work on this later, hey, man?” he says, directing the question this time to Rachel. She nods and both Kurt and Rachel watch him leave. Kurt shuts both sets of doors before sitting down across from Rachel, murderous glare still intact and focussed on her.

“What’s this about, Kurt?” Rachel asks as she stacks sheet music together and avoids eye contact. “We both know I don’t actually have a sister, so what? Was your date with Blaine a complete disaster?”

Kurt shakes his head. “My date was wonderful, thank you. Except, perhaps, for the fact that my phone would not stop vibrating.”

“Oh?”

“Mhm. Mercedes was texting me. I only just called back.”

“What did she want?” Rachel asks, a little more on edge now as she folds her hands neatly on top of the papers.

“Figgins disbanded New Directions. And do you know whose fault that is?” Kurt says, making it perfectly clear that the question is rhetorical. Rachel makes a noise somewhere between ‘um’ and a whimper. “It’s your fault! You’re here, being a selfish, self-centered, oh-so-heartbroken cliché while back at McKinley they’re not only missing a phenomenal lead vocalist, but the twelfth member they need to even be able to meet. You’ve taken away a safe haven, Rachel. This is all on you. I hope you’re happy.”

“Do you really think I’m a phenomenal vocalist?” Rachel says, raising her eyebrows. She’s trying to avoid the problem at hand by redirecting the attention to her voice—it’s a plan that has worked before, but Kurt isn’t having any of it.

“This isn’t a fucking joke,” Kurt hisses at her. Somehow Rachel thinks it would be less terrifying if he just shouted at her. He looks even angrier than when Mr. Schue refused to do Britney Spears and Kurt yelled at him about being uptight.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” she asks.

“What do you mean ‘what do I expect you to do about it’? I expect you to _fix it_.”

“How am I going to do that?”

Rachel hadn’t thought it possible for Kurt to intensify his glare, but she was apparently mistaken. “You’re not stupid, Rachel. You know how to fix it.”

“Stop calling me that,” Rachel says, still trying to avoid the subject.

“It’s your name. You can hide behind Ryan all you want, but I know and you know that this isn’t helping anything. You’re _Rachel Berry_ ; you _need_ to be in the spotlight, and while the Warblers are a wonderful place for you to hide, it’s not going to make you feel better. In New Directions they both need and want you to be their star, no matter how much they pretend otherwise.”

Rachel shakes her head and stands up. “Maybe you should take your own advice,” she mutters as she brushes past Kurt and out the door he didn’t come in.

Kurt turns in his seat to watch her leave, a look of utter disbelief plastered on his face. Jeff wanders into the room and stops short when he sees Kurt. “Hey Kurt! I just saw Ryan stalking out of here, do you—Kurt?”

“It’s nothing, Jeff. Just let it be.”

Jeff watches, perplexed, as Kurt leaves the room, then shrugs to himself and is promptly distracted by the shape of a cloud outside the window.

\---

Kurt nearly falls off his desk chair when his laptop, set to the side in favour of handwriting his history paper outline, starts to ring loudly. He scrambles back in his seat and grabs his headphones, plugging them in and hitting the green ‘Accept’ button. He hears Mercedes’ squeal before Skype loads her face onto the screen.

“We got glee back! We got it back!”

Kurt gasps. “How?”

“Jacob Ben Israel decided to join!” another excited voice rings out. Tina appears beside Mercedes, clearly nudging the other girl over to get in the frame.

“That’s... weird, but _so_ great, guys!” Kurt says happily, and he means it. He hasn’t talked to Rachel since their fight on Saturday and he’d even skipped class to go down to McKinley and attempt to recruit someone on Monday. It’s Thursday now, and he’s being feeling terrible all week—he could barely go longer than an hour without thinking about the way the glee club members had been wandering aimlessly through the halls, like they weren’t sure where they stood now. It hadn’t been entirely obvious, but Kurt paid enough attention to his friends to be able to tell when they weren’t acting normally.

He could barely look over at Rachel’s side of the room without wanting to punch her in the face for the past four days. He chances a glance now and sees that she’s sitting on her bed, ear buds stuck in so she can listen to her iPod and read her textbook without bothering Kurt. She doesn’t seem to have noticed that Kurt has momentarily stopped studying.

“It is weird,” Mercedes agrees. “He won’t tell anyone why he’s had a sudden change of heart and wants to sing now. In fact, he kind of sulks in the corner next to Lauren and nods whenever she says that show choir is stupid.”

“But that’s irrelevant,” Tina says, waving a hand dismissively at the webcam. “We’ll get to go to Regionals now!”

“Do you think we could hatch baby chicks in his hair?” a distinct voice asks from off camera. “Then they could be part of our dance routine. It would be _so cool_.”

Tina bites her lip and Mercedes smirks. Kurt chuckles, wondering why exactly Brittany is over at Mercedes’ house when they’ve barely talked before and Tina can’t be too happy with her for dating Artie. Then again, nothing Brittany does ever entirely makes sense. “Tell Brittany that she needs to spend less time hanging around Coach Sylvester, even if that is probably a sure fire way to beat the Warblers.”

Brittany appears like magic behind Mercedes and Tina. Kurt contributes the suddenness to some sort of connection lag. She waves excitably, her hair falling over Tina’s face. Kurt’s pretty sure he just saw Tina spit a few strands of the blonde out of her mouth. “Are you guys going to have birds at Regionals, too?”

Kurt waves back, grinning. “Um, well, the Warblers—“

“Warblers are birds,” Brittany interrupts gleefully.

“Who are you talking to?” Rachel asks.

Kurt resists the urge to ignore her, knowing that his built-in laptop microphone will have picked up her voice and it will seem odd if he ignores someone talking to him. “Some friends from New Directions,” he says, glancing quickly over at her and then back to the screen.

“Who’s that?” Mercedes asks. She sounds a little suspicious, but Kurt chalks that up to his paranoia.

“It’s a familiar voice,” Tina comments. Kurt tries not to freak out.

“It’s just my roommate,” he says.

“Is he hot?” Brittany asks. “I want to live with a hot boy.”

“What’s his name?” Tina asks.

“Is he single?” Mercedes contributes.

“Ryan,” Kurt says. “And he’s gay.”

“You never told me about a roommate,” Mercedes says, narrowing her eyes. “I thought you’d said you had a single, actually.”

Kurt shrugs. “I thought I had. Weird.” He knows full well that he’s never breathed a word about ‘Ryan’ to anyone from New Directions, except maybe Finn and only then in passing and simply as ‘my roommate’, and he doesn’t see this conversation going anywhere very good. “Listen, ladies, I’ve got a history paper I’ve got to work on. I’ll come down this weekend for celebratory shopping, how does that sound?”

“We’ll go get ice cream,” Brittany says.

“Whatever you want, Brit,” Kurt agrees. “Talk to you later.”

“Bye, Kurt!” Tina and Mercedes chorus. Kurt waves as he hits ‘End Call’ and sets his Skype status to ‘Do Not Disturb’.

Before Kurt can even spin his desk chair to look at Rachel directly she’s standing next to his desk, fiddling with a petal on a flower in the bouquet sitting in a vase. Kurt swats her hand away from it. “Don’t touch my flowers.”

“I still can’t believe he got you flowers,” she murmurs. “Finn never got me flowers.”

“He’s Finn. Next you’ll be expecting him to give up video games for you.”

“I would never,” Rachel says. “Finn’s video games are an essential part of his day to day life. They’re vital to relieving his tensions and alleviating stress.”

Kurt nods slowly. “Uh huh,” he drawls.

“Are you talking to me again now?” she asks.

“While I am overjoyed that New Directions is allowed to form again now that Jacob Ben Israel of all people has decided to join, I don’t see why I should. You still didn’t listen to me.”

Rachel huffs. “I fixed it, Kurt. I had to bribe that little pervert, but I fixed it.”

“...Oh. Well. Hm. I’ll have to think about this.” Kurt turns back to his history paper pointedly. Rachel sighs loudly and dramatically (is there any other way for her to sigh?) and he hears her flop back down onto her bed.

Rachel buries her face in her pillow and tries not to think about the flowers sitting on the desk across the room. She’s almost angry at herself for getting Blaine and Kurt to get a move on, even if their unresolved sexual tension was driving her batty (and she sort of felt guilty for making Kurt keep secrets). All the charming things Blaine does just reminds her of how very not charming Finn was. (Excepting the fact that she thought he was charming anyway.) If she’d wanted flowers, she would have had to tell Finn to get her flowers. Jesse would have gotten her flowers without her even asking. She misses Jesse. (Excepting the fact that he broke an aborted baby chick on her forehead.)

(She misses Finn more.)

But Finn would probably get Santana flowers, wouldn’t he? Because Santana is way hotter than Rachel can ever hope to be.

Rachel pretends she’s not trying really hard to hate Finn (and failing).

\---

Rachel is surprised to find out that Blaine is still in his dorm room on a Friday night, sitting on his bed with an acoustic guitar.

Blaine is surprised that Kurt’s roommate just walked into his room without knocking. At least he’s fully dressed and not doing anything embarrassing.

“What are you doing here?” Rachel stammers out.

Blaine raises an eyebrow. “I think the more prudent question is what are _you_ doing here? This is my room, after all.”

Rachel can feel her cheeks flushing. She stares down at the floor. “I thought you were out with Kurt, and I know your roommate is never around, so I was going to hide out in here for awhile.”

“Kurt went home to visit his family for the weekend,” Blaine says. “Why couldn’t you just stay in your own dorm room? You obviously have it to yourself.”

Rachel snorts and looks back up, rolling her eyes. “It doesn’t feel like it’s to myself when Nick keeps showing up at my door trying to get me to do things with him.”

At that Blaine raises both eyebrows in surprise. He’d noticed that Ryan and Nick were friends, of course, but he hadn’t thought that there were more-than-platonic feelings going on—if that’s what Ryan’s even implying. “Well, you’re welcome to hang out for a bit.” He pats the empty bed in front of him. “I’m just playing my guitar, trying to pass the time.”

Rachel nods and settles herself onto the bed, being careful to not mess up the bedding. She leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes. Blaine looks at her, at a loss as to what to say, and plays a few random chords on his guitar.

“The flowers you got Kurt are really pretty,” Rachel says to fill the silence left after the notes, opening her eyes and looking over at Blaine.

Blaine shrugs. “I thought so, too. He seemed to somewhat think I was trying to treat him like a girl, though. I really wasn’t. I just like flowers.”

Rachel nods. “Having two gay dads, I can understand that sort of dynamic. Dad is always telling Daddy that he’s not a girl and doesn’t need to be treated as such. And then they argue over how they both want to be the one wearing the pants, and I usually have to interject that they’re _both_ wearing pants, so their entire argument is completely pointless.”

Blaine isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say to that, so he just nods.

“I mean, Kurt probably understands that you want to be someone’s boyfriend as much as he does. We may have appointed him Honorary Girl in New Directions, but he’s still a guy. With, you know, guy-ish thoughts and stuff. Right. I’m sorry that I’ve interrupted your peaceful evening to rant about stuff that doesn’t matter and I have no business sticking my nose into.”

“It’s cool,” Blaine says, mildly amused. “I think your sticking your nose into our business is what got us _having_ a business.”

Rachel laughs at that, because it’s really true.

“You weren’t part of New Directions, were you?”

Rachel starts. “No, that’s my sister’s thing. Why?”

“You said ‘we’ in reference to them is all,” Blaine says, shrugging.

“Oh.” Rachel mentally berates herself for slipping up like that. “Rachel just talks about glee a lot. I hear so much about all their drama that I feel like part of it sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you ever join? You’re a great singer, after all.”

“I, uh, didn’t want to bring any more attention to my sexuality,” Rachel says. “And Rachel would kill me for getting all _her_ solos.”

Blaine laughs. “She’s really possessive, isn’t she?”

Rachel narrows her eyes. “Why, did Kurt say that?”

Blaine frowns. “Uh, no... I just got that impression? Not trying to insult her, man, just saying.”

They’re quiet for a moment in which Rachel inspects the cuff of her white dress shirt—it’s fraying, she’ll need to do something about that—and Blaine inspects a guitar string—there’s nothing wrong with it, he’s just trying to look like he’s not awkward.

“What’s wrong with Nick?” he suddenly finds himself asking.

Rachel looks up, frowning. “Nothing.”

“Then why are you avoiding him? You’ve got to know that he’s not a bad guy; you guys spend lots of time together.”

“Working on Warblers stuff,” Rachel feels the need to point out.

Blaine waves that off. “That’s still time to get to know him.” He pauses, but when Rachel doesn’t say anything, he adds, “You did mean that he wanted to go on a date or something, right?”

Rachel sighs. “I think he does, yeah.”

“Well, why not? You’d make a cute couple,” Blaine decides.

Rachel shrugs and hugs her knees to her chest. She likes Nick—he’s pretty funny and not at all bad to hang out with, or else she wouldn’t bother with getting him to help her with things for Warblers. He’s smart and he likes the same music she does. He’s basically her ideal guy, except she keeps comparing everything he does to Finn. She knows that it wouldn’t be fair to date anyone when she’s not over Finn yet.

There’s also that slight issue where she’s not actually a guy, and people in relationships are likely to figure something like that out, and then Nick would be angry at her for lying.

“Ryan?” Blaine asks. Rachel doesn’t respond. Blaine sighs. “Okay, we won’t talk about Nick, then.”

“I had a boyfriend back at McKinley,” Rachel says before she can stop herself. “I’m... I’m not over him yet.”

Blaine’s eyebrows rise to mile high club heights. “You mean there are even _more_ boys hiding their sexuality at McKinley? Damn, why didn’t you guys do something when Kurt was being harassed?”

Any colour that was previously in Rachel’s face has drained out of it. “I—well, we, uh.”

Blaine just looks at her, his expression a cross between disbelief and accusation.

“We got slushied just for being losers!” Rachel bursts out, her tone taking on a panicked edge. “We saw what happened to Kurt and we didn’t want to be next. We were afraid of stepping up and making ourselves more of a target.”

“And all the while Kurt got shoved into lockers and thrown into dumpsters and—never mind. But you just stood there and let him take it.” Blaine shakes his head and stares at his guitar angrily. He feels the bed shift as Rachel gets up.

“I better leave,” she says. “I’m always running away like this,” she adds under her breath.

Blaine sets the guitar to the side and grabs her wrist before she can walk away. “Hey, don’t go.” Rachel stares at his hand on her wrist, then up at his face. “I run away from things, too.” Rachel turns back toward him and he lets her wrist go. “The fact that I’m here is proof enough of that.”

Rachel sits hesitantly on the edge of the bed. “Same with me,” she says. “I only got it maybe half as bad as Kurt and I still felt like I had to get out of there.” And she hadn’t even actually left because of the bullying. God, she’s pathetic.

“Not all of us can have as much courage as Kurt,” Blaine says wryly. “I try to give him good advice, but it feels like I’m preaching to the choir. He’s more of an inspiration to me than I could ever be to him.”

Rachel thinks about the photo and collage Kurt had in his locker at McKinley and seriously doubts that. “You don’t give yourself enough credit,” she informs him. “You’re a pretty great person, Blaine. Anyone who met you would agree.”

Blaine scoffs. “Thank you, but I try very hard.”

Rachel pats his shoulder comfortingly. “Kurt’ll make a man out of you yet, Anderson,” she says jokingly. “You’ve stopped being stuffy around him, now you just need to expand your horizons, so to speak.”

“I’m not sure that metaphor works...”

“I think a good first step would be for Kurt to steal all your hair gel. I’ll be sure to plant that little seed in his mind,” Rachel says, ignoring Blaine’s comment. Of course the metaphor works. Her metaphors always work.

“Don’t you dare,” Blaine says, but he says it in more of a teasing tone than he’d intended. Rachel just laughs and gets up again.

“I really should leave,” she says. “I’m probably going to go to bed early.”

Blaine nods. “Yeah, me too. Thanks for stopping by. It was nice talking to you, even if you lacked the politeness to knock.”

Rachel winces. “I’m really sorry about that.”

Blaine just laughs and waves her away. “Oh, Ryan?”

She pauses just by the door and turns around. “Yes?”

“You’re not a bad person for wanting to keep yourself safe,” Blaine says.

Rachel tilts her head to the side slightly, not sure what to make of that comment, but she just smiles at him in the hope that it’s response enough, and slips out the door. She makes her way back to her dorm room, thankful that Nick is nowhere to be seen.

Blaine puts his guitar away and considers the conversation he just had as he starts getting ready to go to bed, if not to sleep. As much as it pisses him off that anyone would just stand by and watch as Kurt was harassed, he can’t help but understand why they didn’t do anything. He wonders who Ryan’s boyfriend is—if he’s still walking the halls of McKinley High. He wonders if Dalton will be acquiring another transfer. He doubts it. Ryan’s ex (he had implied that they’d broken up, right?) is probably nearly as far in the closet as Karofsky.

Rachel scrolls back up Finn’s Facebook profile and stares at the latest post on his wall. It’s a status update from ten minutes ago about, in typical Finn fashion, food. Namely, pop tarts and how he’s hoping his mother bought some. Rachel feels an inexplicable urge to get pop tarts and take them to him, which is ridiculous because a) she’s a two hour drive away, b) pop tarts are unhealthy, and c) she probably wouldn’t have even done that when they were dating.

She might not be a bad person for wanting to keep herself safe, but she’s definitely a bad person for ruining what she had with Finn over something entirely inconsequential.

\---

“How exactly did you bribe Israel?” Kurt asks almost immediately after getting back from Lima on Sunday evening.

Rachel winces. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do, actually. I’ve decided it’s important for me to know in order to assess whether or not to forgive you enough to start talking to you again,” he says matter-of-factly as he shrugs off his jacket and hangs it up in the closet.

Rachel briefly considers just not telling him. She knows that nothing short of going back to McKinley and getting completely over Finn will convince Kurt to fully forgive her, and even that might not work entirely. She abandons that idea quickly—she’s discovered that it’s really, really awkward to live with someone who won’t talk to you.

“It involved my underwear,” she admits. “And a feather boa.”

Kurt turns away from the bag he’s unpacking and stares at her. “You didn’t strip tease for him or something, did you?”

Rachel just shrugs and pretends to be reading the book she has open in her lap. She listens to Kurt go back to unpacking and registers when he’s finished by the sound of him closing the closet door. He sighs audibly and she glances up at him again.

“You’re somewhat forgiven,” he says. The words are barely out of his mouth before Rachel launches herself across the room and throws her arms around him. He stumbles backwards and pushes uselessly at her shoulders. “Get _off_.”

“Thank you,” Rachel mumbles into his shirt before releasing him.

He smoothes the front of his button down indignantly. “I suppose you’re welcome.”

The grin on Rachel’s face is so huge that Kurt can’t really help smiling back at her.

“So, how was your weekend?” Rachel asks, settling herself into her desk chair and looking at him expectantly. She’s so relieved to be able to ask him questions and know that he’ll answer again. She likes talking to Kurt.

He sits down in his own chair and spins once before stopping facing her. “Fabulous,” he informs her. “I had a great shopping day with Mercedes, Tina, and Brittany on Saturday, and then they stayed overnight and I flaunted my camp all up in Finn’s face.”

Rachel tries not to look more interested at the mention of Finn’s name. “How did you do that?”

“Gave myself a facial and let Brittany give me a manicure. In front of the TV so that he couldn’t play Xbox without seeing me. I think he thought I was some sort of alien when he first saw me, actually. It wasn’t even green, but whatever.”

“That explains the alien abduction status update,” Rachel says without thinking.

Kurt raises an eyebrow. “Rachel, do you stalk Finn’s Facebook?”

“No.”

“Potentially stare at his relationship status wistfully? Go through all the pictures of him repeatedly and cringe whenever you see him with some other girl? Analyze everything he posts until ‘lol’ means ‘will never love me even though this status update is unrelated to anything we’ve ever done’? You can’t lie to me, Rachel.”

“You sound awfully familiar with my methods,” Rachel sniffs.

Kurt snorts. “Facebook is like crack for anyone with a crush. Do you know how happy I was when Blaine first accepted my friend request?” He pauses and then adds, very seriously, “In your case it’s really not healthy, though.”

Rachel sighs. “I know it’s not. Doesn’t mean I can help myself.”

“You should help yourself,” Kurt says stubbornly. “You need to _move on_. I thought you came here to get away from your heartbreak?”

“I did,” Rachel says. “Social networking sites are like a black hole of despair. They suck you in and never let you go.”

“Give me your laptop.”

“What?”

Kurt holds out his hands. “Hand it over.”

“Why?”

“Rachel Berry,” Kurt warns. He sounds remarkably like her father. Either of them.

“All right!” she acquiesces, retrieving her laptop from its place on her desk and passing it carefully over to him. “What are you doing?”

“Pulling you out of the vortex,” Kurt says. He clicks open her web browser and onto Facebook, which, as he’d assumed it would be, is logged in under her name. He clicks into her account settings and changes her password, then logs her out before handing the computer back.

Rachel looks at the Facebook login screen with obvious trepidation, then up at Kurt questioningly.

“Try logging in,” he suggests, a hint of a smirk hiding just behind his lips.

She does so. It doesn’t work and, thinking she made a typo, she tries again. She definitely didn’t make a typo that time. She frowns at the screen—and then it dawns on her. “You changed my password! See if I ever trust you again, Kurt Hummel.”

Kurt just laughs. “It’s really for the better and you know it, Rachel Berry,” he says in a mocking tone.

Rachel stares wistfully at the screen a moment longer before setting the computer aside. “I wonder if anyone thinks to look for Ryan on Facebook,” she muses.

“Don’t you dare make a new account for him. That would have so many flaws that it would look ten times more suspicious than just a lack of him,” Kurt says admonishingly. “Besides, I’m not stupid. I know you’ll just friend Finn and he’ll accept and we’ll be back where we started.”

Rachel shakes her head. “No, I won’t do that. I need to focus on my studies, and all that time I spend on the internet could be put to better use.”

Kurt can _almost_ hear the ‘You’re right’ that Rachel should be uttering. He figures he can accept the ghost of it, if only because he knows it would take a hell of a lot more than just changing her Facebook password to get her to admit she was even the semblance of wrong about something.

“I’m glad you’ve forgiven me,” Rachel says apropos nothing. Kurt raises an eyebrow in her direction. “I think you’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend.”

Kurt winces. “Glee is your friend,” he points out.

Rachel shrugs. “Not really.”

“No, really,” Kurt says firmly. He can tell that Rachel is expecting him to say more, but he doesn’t want to explain exactly how most of the members of the McKinley glee club feel about Rachel. It seems terribly complicated and way too much like actually emotionally bonding with her.

And admitting that he likes her more than just tolerating her. Which he doesn’t and never will.

Really.

\---

“I think we’ve got it!” Rachel declares after the last note of ‘Hold My Hand’ has dissipated. She holds her hand up for Nick—they’d picked him as soloist instead of Blaine after they’d determined that Blaine wasn’t particularly suited for the song—to high five. He does so, grinning widely at her. His gaze lingers just a little too long, and Rachel pretends she doesn’t notice.

“Hey now, you’re not a council member. You don’t decide whether we’ve performed up to par or not,” Thad says condescendingly at Rachel, interrupting the excited buzz of the rest of the Warblers. They all watch in trepidation as she puts her hands on her hips and raises a challenging eyebrow at him.

“We’ve got it!” David interrupts, shoving Thad behind him lightly. The Warblers all erupt into cheers again and more high fives are exchanged. Nick tries to high five Rachel again, but she ducks behind Blaine and pretends to join his conversation with Kurt.

This is really stretching it, because if they’re conversing, they’re only doing it with their eyes. It’s really quite sickening, in Rachel’s opinion.

“Are you two officially dating?” she asks, just for something to say.

Blaine and Kurt both start at that and shuffle their feet awkwardly in an attempt to move away from her—she’s popped up nearly in middle of them. Before either of them can say anything, Wes bangs his gavel and shouts “Order!”

Everyone shuts up, because when Wes wants order, Wes _needs_ his order.

“Fellow Warblers, I do believe our set list for Regionals is complete and well on its way to becoming a winning performance. However, said competition is in a week and two days, and thus the council has decided to add extra rehearsals into our schedule. Please pick up your copy of the updated schedule as you leave and note that we will reconvene tomorrow at four PM sharp. Good work, men.” He bangs his gavel and the Warblers all start filing out the door in an orderly fashion, as is proper at Dalton.

Kurt gapes at the rehearsal schedule he took from Thad as he left the room. “We’ve got _lunch time_ practices,” he says incredulously to no one in particular.

Blaine laughs at the look on Kurt’s face. “The council seems to be really into this. They’re determined to lead us to Nationals, I suppose.”

“I think that this over abundance of practices is going to lead to equally over abundant cases of performance stress,” Rachel, who is still using Blaine as a shield against Nick, contributes. “If we practice this often and are constantly being drilled to perfection, everyone will want to _be_ perfect. The ending result will either be the sort of automaton performance better expected from Vocal Adrenaline or the shattering of everyone’s nerves in the green room, which will cause the performance to be all over the place.”

“She has a point,” Kurt says. “Show choir is all about the glee, as some would say, and if we want to be perfect, we’ll forget the reasons why we sing in the first place.”

“She?” Blaine asks.

“What?”

“You said she in reference to Ryan.”

Kurt fights to keep the red out of his cheeks. Rachel stares at him from Blaine’s other side with a deer-in-headlights expression. “Slip of the tongue is all,” he says dismissively. “What do you think?”

“About what?” Blaine says obliviously.

“The likelihood of these practices doing more harm than good,” Kurt says none too patiently.

“Oh. I guess it’s a possibility. Do you think we should bring it up with the council?”

“I think so,” Rachel says. Kurt nods in agreement.

“Tomorrow at four?” Blaine suggests.

“Sounds fine,” Kurt says.

“All right. I’m off to study for my calculus exam,” Blaine says, clapping his hands on Kurt and Rachel’s shoulders. “Try not to have any exciting adventures without me.”

“You know nothing exciting happens when you’re around,” Rachel teases. “We have to take what we can get.”

Kurt swats Rachel’s shoulder. “Nothing exciting will be happening in our dorm room tonight, don’t you worry,” he says. “Good luck studying.”

“Thanks, I’ll need it.” Kurt and Blaine look at each other in that awkward way you do the person you like, wondering if they’re supposed to hug goodbye or something just because they might be dating or something. Rachel rolls her eyes and sets off down the hall toward the dorm room on her own. Kurt shoots a smile in Blaine’s direction and darts after her.

“Please don’t get mad at me,” he says the second the door closes behind them. “I’m not in the mood to deal with a Rachel Berry scale shunning.”

Rachel turns to look at him. “Why would I get mad at you?”

“I... well, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” Kurt says, sitting down in his desk chair and rifling through his messenger bag in search of homework he actually wants to do, which doesn’t exist. He pulls out a Spanish worksheet anyway and starts filling in the easy blanks.

Rachel does know why she would get mad at Kurt, but she doesn’t really think it’s a big deal. She feels that way about a lot of things that would have bothered her in the past these days. She can’t decide if it’s a good or a bad thing that she’s so indifferent. Rachel turns on her laptop and stares at the screen blankly. “It’s times like these I miss Facebook,” she says forlornly.

“If I wasn’t locked out, I would stare at status updates right now,” Kurt chimes in, rolling his eyes. “Do you know how many times you’ve said those exact two sentences these past weeks? Did you spend your entire _life_ on that site before I changed your password? Because it seems like it.”

“I can procrastinate when I want to,” Rachel says indignantly.

“Well, you’re not making me want to give you the new password.”

“I don’t think I want it, anyway,” Rachel mutters.

Kurt looks up from his worksheet to observe Rachel slumped against her desk, a pen that she’s running along the edge of the wood in her hand and her head resting on the other hand. She looks ready to fall asleep. “Are you okay, Rachel?” he asks, honestly wondering.

“What?” She looks up at him and seems to suddenly realize what she’s doing. She sits up quickly and puts the pen down. “I’m fine. Why?”

He purses his lips. He doesn’t believe that she’s fine, but if he wasn’t in the mood to be shunned by her, he’s definitely not in the mood to dissect her feelings. He chalks it up to some sort of girl mood swing thing and makes a mental note to start worrying if she’s still acting the same the next day. “No reason,” he tells her.

She nods and appears to busy herself with something on her computer screen. Kurt suspects that she’s merely playing Minesweeper, which he knows she has no idea how to play, but he doesn’t comment.

\---

“Medium drip for you,” Kurt says, pushing a coffee cup across the table Blaine saved for them at the closest coffee shop to Dalton. Blaine takes it with a smile. “And non-fat mocha for me,” he adds as he sits down.

“No cookies?” Blaine asks, looking disappointed.

“Did you really expect me to buy cookies?” Kurt asks skeptically.

Blaine smiles a bit. “I suppose not, but it would have been a welcome surprise.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kurt says wryly. “How was your calculus exam?”

“I know I missed a few questions, but overall I think I at least passed.”

“You probably got a stellar mark that you’ll proceed to tell me is terrible.”

“That seems to be the trend,” Blaine agrees, taking a sip of his coffee. They sit quietly for a few minutes, drinking their coffee and enjoying each other’s company. Blaine likes that even though they have no end of things to talk about, they can still sit in silence and it isn’t awkward.

“Are we officially dating?” Kurt suddenly asks. Blaine nearly spits out his coffee.

“What makes you ask that?”

“Ryan asked us yesterday at rehearsal and I realized I didn’t know the answer.”

“Let’s see—we spent a couple months going on platonic outings before you asked me out on an honest-to-goodness date. I then bought you flowers in thanks, because it’s classy or I think flowers are pretty, take your pick. Since then we’ve been going out for coffee more often, as well as out for lunch a couple times, and I think I actually met your father, didn’t I? Or was that a nightmare...” Blaine stares at a painting on the wall, lost in thought. Kurt stares at him, unsure what to think. “Anyway,” Blaine continues after shaking himself out of his stupor, “I think all that equals us dating. Do you agree?”

“We haven’t kissed,” Kurt points out. It seems like a telling thing, their lip virginity when it comes to each other.

Blaine tilts his head a bit and takes a sip of his coffee. “That’s because the last time someone kissed you you didn’t want them to. Call it paranoia, but I was waiting for you to kiss me.”

Kurt’s eyes widen a bit. He puts his coffee down off to the side of the small round table and pushes Blaine’s cup out of the way as well before scooting his chair closer to Blaine’s and grabbing a fistful of Blaine’s coat to drag him closer. Blaine lets it happen, refusing to actually think about what he thinks is about to—

And then it is happening, because Kurt tastes a bit like chocolate and a lot like just Kurt. The three seconds, if that, that the kiss lasts feel like eternity and a nanosecond all at the same time.

“Guh,” Blaine groans, resisting the urge to drag Kurt back over from where he’s sat back in his chair again. He has to think really hard about where they are to have any success with that. _Public public public public..._

“I think we’re officially dating,” Kurt says, the picture of nonchalance—except for the tiny shake in his hand as he lifts his coffee cup to his mouth.

The mouth that Blaine _kissed_. He can’t even wrap his mind around that. All he can really do is nod.

“So now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Kurt says, “do you want to tell me why you’re having nightmares about meeting my father? Because he’s really very nice.”

\---

Kurt starts awake to find Rachel’s face hovering above his own. He’s breathing heavily and can only just remember his dream—he’s sure it involved Karofsky doing something to him, so he doesn’t think too hard about it. Instead he focuses on Rachel. She looks odd for some reason, as much as he can see of her in the darkened dorm room. He tries to figure out why, then comes to the realization that it’s because she’s not dressed as Ryan—he can actually see her boobs (he’s going to stop thinking about that now, because ew) and her hair has grown out a bit since she transferred, so she looks quite a lot like a girl.

“Are you awake?” she whispers, even though he clearly is. “You were flailing around in your bed for a long time. You even got through my sound blocking headphones.”

“M’sorry,” he mutters, pushing himself into a sitting position. Rachel sits up on the edge of his bed.

“I was expecting Blaine to show up,” she muses.

“I haven’t had any nightmares for awhile. He’s not on red alert, I suppose,” Kurt says, rubbing at his eyes.

“Want to talk about it?” Rachel asks.

Kurt shakes his head. “No, I—“

The door suddenly swings open, letting the dim light from the hallway spread across the floor before it’s blocked by a familiar silhouette. “Kurt?” Blaine’s quiet voice asks.

It sounds like he’s shouting to Rachel. She sits rooted to the bed, unsure what to do. She considers diving for her bed and hiding under the covers, but she can’t move. She considers hiding under Kurt’s covers, but she still can’t move and that’s a bad idea anyway.

She watches in horror as Blaine steps into the room, shutting the door behind him. It seems like everything is in slow motion until she feels Kurt’s hand on her shoulder and hears him hiss at her, quite pointlessly, “You didn’t lock the door!”

And then Blaine flicks the light on and time almost stands still. Blaine’s staring at her and she’s staring at Blaine and Kurt is staring at both of them and Rachel can’t even think, has no idea what to think.

Blaine blinks incredulously. “Girl?” he asks.

Rachel wants to disappear. Kurt doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to that.

Blaine grows increasingly agitated as he looks over at Rachel-slash-Ryan’s bed to see that it’s empty and then back at Kurt’s bed to see that there’s still a girl sitting on it. “Girl?” he repeats, stepping closer to the bed, and then all the pieces slot together in his sleep hazed mind. “Rachel!” he says, pointing at her.

Kurt envisions getting expelled and resigns himself to his fate. “Blaine Anderson, meet Rachel Berry,” he says tiredly, waving a hand between the two of them.

This helps nothing, as the two merely continue to stare at each other. Blaine snaps out of it first. “Are you okay, Kurt?”

Kurt frowns. “Well, it’s the middle of the night on a Sunday and I’ve just been caught hiding a girl in my dorm room, so I’m trying to come to terms with my imminent expulsion and return to the hell that is William McKinley, but otherwise I’m peachy. Why do you ask?”

“You were having a nightmare,” Blaine says. “That’s why I’m here in the first place.”

“Oh, right,” Kurt says. “It’s fine. I can’t remember what I was dreaming about, anyway.”

“Are you going to tell on me?” Rachel asks abruptly, sounding for all the world like a little kid caught doing something bad on the playground.

Blaine frowns at her. “I don’t know. What are you doing here?”

Rachel launches into a tirade about Finn and Santana and Puck and the injustice of the McKinley grapevine that reminds Kurt a lot of how she used to be before she got so hung up on Finn, only it’s lacking a lot of the fervour and vocabulary that he would normally expect from her. By the end of it, Blaine’s sitting down on Rachel’s bed and staring blankly across the room.

There’s a long awkward silence before Kurt asks, “Are you mad at me for not telling you?”

Blaine shakes his head almost immediately. “No. I mean, it would have been nice if you had, but I understand why you didn’t. Obviously Berry here would have ripped off your head.”

“A likely story,” Rachel agrees.

Blaine stands up. “I won’t tell anybody, if only because that would only result in both of you having to go back to McKinley, thus giving New Directions two of our best performers a week before Regionals.” It’s the most superficial reason he could possibly give, but it’s better than admitting that he doesn’t want Kurt to be expelled because he wants Kurt to be a step across the hall rather than a two hour drive down the highway or admitting that somewhere along the line Ryan became vital to holding together the Warblers. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m going back to bed.”

Kurt and Rachel both mutter good night wishes as Blaine steps out the door and shuts it behind him. Kurt expects Rachel to get off his bed and go get in her own, but she doesn’t move.

“That could have gone worse,” he comments.

“I think I just saw my life flash before my eyes,” Rachel says shakily.

Kurt rolls his eyes and impulsively wraps his arms around Rachel in a quick hug. “You’re a drama queen,” he tells her. “Apparently even at two in the morning.”

She laughs and hugs him back a little too fiercely. “So are you, so I think it’s okay.”

\---

Kurt is running through harmonies in his head in the middle of the lobby at the center Regionals is at while the Warblers all talk around him when he spots Artie rolling across the floor toward him, flanked by the rest of the New Directions guys. He smiles and waves in their direction. He expects to be greeted with random questions about his well being and perhaps an update on the guys’ side of any new drama, but Artie looks at him with a very sombre expression.

“I’m sorry I’ve broken the bro code, man,” he says.

Kurt frowns. “Hello to you, too. What bro code?”

“We were discussing how uncool it is to go after your friend’s girlfriend on the bus ride over,” Sam says. He shoots a glare in Finn’s direction. Kurt makes a mental note to find out what that’s about.

“Artie’s really into it,” Mike adds. “He’s sort of mad at me for dating Tina.”

“Which led me to point out that he’s actually dating your ex-girlfriend,” Puck says, smirking.

“Kurt, I am really, truly sorry. I know we’re hardly the best of friends, but I still consider you a friend,” Artie says earnestly.

Kurt resists the urge to start laughing. “Artie, don’t worry about it. I’m in a perfectly happy relationship myself, and you know I was never serious about Brittany.”

“Wait, so—“

Finn is cut off by Blaine’s appearance at Kurt’s side. “Did someone say happy relationship?”

“Sure did,” Kurt says, bumping his hip playfully into Blaine’s. “Blaine, meet the guys from New Directions. Guys, meet Blaine Anderson, my boyfriend.”

“Nice to meet you, dude,” Puck says. Sam and Mike nod and Artie grins, though Kurt has the suspicion that that’s just because Kurt let him off easy about his whole bro code thing.

“I think we need to get back to the rest of the group,” Artie says. “I just saw you and had to come apologize. Good luck!” He spins his wheelchair around and heads back in the other direction, followed by the rest of the guys. Finn hangs back awkwardly, intending to ask Kurt if he’s told Burt about his new boyfriend.

“What was he apologizing for?” Blaine asks Kurt before Finn can say anything.

“Dating my ex-girlfriend, apparently,” Kurt says.

This attracts the attention of Nick, who’s standing nearby talking to Rachel. “You had a girlfriend?”

Kurt’s cheeks redden. “For, like, a week. I was trying to be straight to make my dad happy. Didn’t work.”

“He dressed like a trucker, too,” Rachel chimes in. “And sang John Mellencamp.”

“You don’t need to tell them that,” Kurt whines.

“No, do tell, Berry,” Blaine says.

“There is nothing to tell!” Kurt protests loudly, flailing his arms. The Warblers that are paying attention to them all laugh at Kurt, and he glares at them.

“Rachel?” Finn says from behind Kurt.

Kurt spins around so fast that he nearly hits Finn in the nose with his head. “No, Finn, it’s Ryan. Rachel’s brother?” he says.

Finn looks at him like he’s high. “Kurt, Rachel doesn’t have a brother.”

“Obviously she does,” Blaine says. “Maybe you just never met Ryan?”

Finn directs the same look at Blaine. “I dated Rachel. I went over to her house loads of times. I think I would have met him if he existed.”

“ _Finn_ ,” Kurt hisses. Finn ignores him.

“Why are you pretending to be a boy?” Finn asks Rachel.

Rachel tries to pretend that she’s not freaking out inside. “I _am_ a boy. It’s just due to misfortune that we never ran across each other when you were dating my sister.”

“You—Rachel, what the hell are you doing? You weren’t just visiting Kurt that one time, were you? You actually transferred to Dalton. I can’t believe this.”

“Finn,” Rachel says quietly, her tone pleading. “Please don’t.”

“Is what he’s saying true?” Wes asks. All the Warblers, even the ones that weren’t paying attention to Kurt, are now staring at Rachel.

She doesn’t see the point anymore, so she just nods.

“Berry,” Blaine starts.

“Don’t bother, Blaine. And you might as well just call me Rachel now.”

Kurt stares at Rachel. He can’t believe she just gave up after all that. Sure, there is really no way out of this situation, but he would have expected her to go down with more of a fight.

What he’s even more surprised by is the Warblers reactions. They all look scandalized for sure, but they don’t look like they want to kick Rachel to the curb. They're muttering to each other, and the council members look to be having an emergency meeting over in the corner.

“This sucks,” Kurt says. Blaine nods in agreement. Rachel just stands and stares at the floor.

“You can’t sing with us,” Wes announces abruptly. Rachel just nods, having already figured that out, but the other Warblers all protest.

“Ryan—Rachel—whatever—helped us improve so much!”

“We need him—her!”

“Come on, Wes, you’ve got—“

“Guys, calm down. We want Ryan to sing with us, too, but with him actually being a her and thus not even legally allowed to be enrolled at the school, and that Finn guy off to no doubt tell the officials, we can’t risk being disqualified,” David says.

“I didn’t even notice Finn leave,” Blaine mutters to Kurt. Kurt shrugs; he hadn’t noticed either, but he’s sure David’s right.

“Boycott!” someone calls out from the middle of the group of Warblers.

Rachel looks up and shakes her head. “No, you guys need to perform. It’s easy enough to fill in my part; you can do with one less alto.” She shakes her head more at the various protests. “Seriously, guys. You’re wonderful. You can do this.”

“Warblers to the green room!” Thad commands. “Let’s make Berry proud!”

The Warblers all follow the council members out of the lobby, Kurt and Blaine included. They clap Rachel on the back or pat her on the shoulder as they pass by, and she smiles at them all. Nick is the last to walk past her, and he doesn’t touch her, just stops and turns to look at her.

“So, I guess this is why you didn’t want to go out with me,” he says.

“It was the main reason,” Rachel says. “I’m sorry.”

Nick shrugs. “It’s cool. I’d still be up for it, you know, even if your name is actually Rachel.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Ryan was pretty damn girly, so I’m assuming you didn’t change too much of your personality.”

Rachel smiles at Nick. She thinks it’s pretty damn awesome that he cares more about her personality than her gender. “I’ll keep it in mind. You rock your solo, all right? I’ll be in the audience cheering.”

“We’ll miss you onstage,” Nick says before turning on his heel and jogging after the rest of the Warblers.

\---

Kurt finds Rachel sitting against the wall between the Warblers’ green room and New Directions’ green room after the Warblers are finished performing. He can hear the faint strains of Aural Intensity’s performance coming through the speakers from both rooms.

He sits down next to her and studies her face. Her eyes are a bit red, like maybe she was almost crying, but she’s dry eyed.

“Do you think New Directions would let me perform with them?” Rachel asks. She means it as a joke, but it comes out sounding serious. Kurt doesn’t take it that way, though.

Just then a crash sounds from inside the New Directions’ room. He thinks he hears Tina shouting something. “I think if you waltzed in there right now, they’d take you back in a heartbeat,” Kurt says. “Except Finn, but that would be asking too much.”

“Funny how he’s the only one whose reaction I’d care about,” Rachel mumbles. The sound of Lauren yelling something about candy drifts out into the hallway.

Kurt sighs. “You know, when I went shopping with Mercedes awhile ago, I told her how Dalton felt like winning a football game to me.” At the confused look on Rachel’s face, he adds, “It’s awesome, but it’s not for me.” She nods understandingly. “So I was thinking, since you’re going to have to go back to McKinley now... maybe I’ll come with you.”

Rachel frowns. “It’s not safe for you, though. I can go back because all I was avoiding was stupid things, but your situation was serious.”

Kurt shrugs and wonders offhandedly what Quinn is so worked up about. “Hey, I’m Kurt Hummel. I need to be in the spotlight. The Warblers can help me hide, but they’re just not going to cut it forever.”

“I didn’t _mean it_ when I said you could take your own advice,” Rachel says. Sam yells something at the same time as Finn is yelling something.

“I meant it, though. You’re a star, Rachel. You see what you did with the Warblers? You made them better just by being your own diva self. _You_ don’t need _them_ to be a star. _They_ need _you_.”

Rachel laughs dryly. “Would you believe it if I told you that part of the reason I transferred was because I wanted to shine but felt neglected with New Directions?”

“I’d believe it,” Kurt says. “But I don’t think for a second that it’s true.”

“Careful, Hummel,” Rachel says. “I might start to think that you actually do like me.”

“Nonsense.”

“I’m going to hug you now, and you’re going to let me do it. Then I’m going to walk into that green room and stop them from killing each other. You can come help if you like.”

This time when Rachel throws herself at Kurt, he throws himself right back.

\---

Rachel Berry doesn’t stick a gold star next to the signature on her papers for transfer back to McKinley. She does, however, stick one next to her face in a picture of Kurt, Blaine, and herself all in Dalton uniform for the last time (the picture had been taken for posterity at Rachel’s insistence).

She tucks a copy of her planned bully avoidance routes for Blaine into her bag, along with a change of clothes and various paraphernalia to put in her locker, before checking the checklist she’s made for herself to make sure she’s one hundred percent ready to go back to McKinley.

The checklist says she is, but she has her doubts concerning a number of purely social things. That’s not a problem, though. It’s okay that Rachel doesn’t have this in the bag.


End file.
